Their Eyes
by Nicolas Gourault
Synopsis
Their Eyes is an experimental documentary project which will investigate the power asymmetries and neocolonial exploitation involved in the training of autonomous cars. The film will start with a service of autonomous taxis within a gated community of wealthy retirees in Florida, USA. The service was run by a startup and it operated between 2018 and 2021 when it was acquired by another company and the service was shutdown. In 2018, when the tests began in the USA, a terrible economic crisis struck Venezuela and thus a lot of people there lost their job and had to rely to online gig work to survive the hyperinflation. Many of them ended up labelling images used to train self-driving cars in the Global North. My film will take a thorough and critical look at how the service was marketed and used and put that in contrast to the process of training the AI of the cars, thus asking what is the global cost for so-called “disruptive” technologies ?
Credits
Testimonies : Oliver, Elvina, Ivon, Yonaille, Jonel
Research assistants : Leonard Nally Simala, Andrea Paola Hernandez, Niside Panebianco
Editing : Lucas Azémar
Screenwriting advisor : Quentin Faucheux
Image assistant : Héléna Michaud
Sound editing & re-recording : Etienne André
Production : Yannick Beauquis, Quentin Brayer
Production : Don Quichotte Films
A film developed in the framework of SIC – SoundImageCulture
Thanks : Inès Sieulle, Antoine Chapon, Claire Williams, Clara Chapus, Charlotte Cherici, Yuyan Wang, Peter Zorn, Marcie Jost, SoundImageCulture, Amir Borenstein, Mary Jimenez, Jorge Leon, Effi Weiss, Julie Pfleiderer, Jan De Coster, Susanne Weck, Julien Chapelle, Sasha Litvintseva & Beny Wagner, Don Quichotte Films, Yannick Beauquis, Quentin Brayer, Julian Posada, Milagros Miceli, Paola Tubaro, Sana Ahmad, Alex Roy, Phil Koopman, Adrien Gaidon, Winifred Poster.
More Information
Year: 2025
Duration: 23′
Language: English
Subtitles: English, French
website : https://nicolasgourault.fr
Exhibitions – Screenings
Berlinale 2025 – World Premiere
Awards
Best Visual Concept Award at Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival, Romania, 09/2025
Special Mention Youth Jury at Silhouette Festival, France, FR, 09/2025
CIFF award for Best Documentary Short Film at Camden International Film Festival, US, 09/2025
Best Film at Syncro Film Fest, Buenos Aires, AR, 06/2025
Best International Short Film, Tenemos Que Ver, Uruguay, 06/2025
Best Short Film, Flatpack Film Festival, UK, 05/2025
Special Mention at Glasgow Short Film Festival, UK, 03/2025
Firebird Award at Hong Kong International Film Festival, Hong Kong, HK, 04/2025
Awarded the EMEL Short Film Grand Prize at IndieLisboa, Lisbon, PT, 05/2025
Honorary Mention, Ars Electronica, Linz, AT, 09/2024
“The film opens a metaphysical hole beneath our feet, whose darkness stares back at us with frightening questions about human value and dignity in today’s world. For its precise and empathetic investigation, annotation and experimentation.”
Jury statement – Hong Kong IFF – Firebird Award
“Starting from a minimal visual motif, this film builds into an anthropological exploration of the unseen human work behind the development of AI technology. In doing so, it embodies the need to use contemporary tools to talk about contemporary realities, while exposing the discrepancies in the urban landscape along the North-South divide. Overall, it is a relevant meditation on how technology is shaping our perception of the world.”
Jury statement – Indielisboa – EMEL Short Film Granz Prize
“For the delicate attention to the workers, lives, and labor behind a machinery of images whose ends serve self-driving cars in the Western world, shifting its focus from these ends to what is left outside the frame – the music played during work, the exploitative wages and the strategies to resist them, and the curiosity for their environments in places such as Venezuela, Kenya, and the Philippines, the jury has decided to award Their Eyes by Nicolas Gourault, A powerful act of agency in a world where AI seems to be robbing us of it.”
Jury statement – Syncro Film Fest – Best Film in the Parallel Universes Competition