The short film, Filter, directed by Sarah Murtaza, follows a female influencer who receives a new pair of glasses to show off to her followers. But things quickly go wrong. The glasses begin to change her perception of reality. For example, speech changes for people speaking to her, leading to awkward reactions when she replies, thinking they’ve said something else.
The film’s biggest strength is the blunt and direct delivery of its message. The glasses, which are powered by an AI voice, represent the slippery slope of faux intelligence as well as its replacement of human emotions. The short tackles these head-on in a manner that only the toughest contemporary issues deserve. It jumps across ideas, with the social media influencer age taking centre stage in moments, as the glasses take the mask of this persona, telling us to filter out pain and become an entirely different person.
Murtaza’s direction in this reflects the duality of it all, with shots composed around reflections in mirrors, physically breaking down the change in personality that the Artificial Intelligence represents. With this kind of premise, it’s easy not to push its conceptualisations far enough, but Murtaza really delves into the shifting landscape of her friendships in this case, as those close to her begin to drift away.
Beyond that, the film offers less of a vague generalised view of such events, but rather throws a more female lens, adding to the strength of its commentary. In a bleak age of digital misinformation, there’s an honesty to this film’s sense of perhaps, as the layers do finally reveal themselves in an ending that recognises its slippery situation and speaks to its audience in a forceful manner. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Filter is able to juggle a number of current issues through the perspective of a lead character. As those close to her play a key role in fulfilling such interactions and adding necessary emotional weight to a society that revolves around peers and selflessness. It doesn’t simply present itself, either; Murtaza harnesses the power of the image to deceive our eyes and deliver a product that knows it has the power to push through discourse on such tricky and somewhat taboo subject matter.
Sometimes being blunt is a good way of getting an idea across that feels desperate, akin to a cry for help. In this case, it’s the social media age, classing with the rise of Artificial intelligence, a subject that is not in the headlines.
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