Festivals - Sundance Film Festival 2021 : Users directed by Natalia Almada will have its world premiere

By Mulder, 07 january 2021

Acclaimed filmmaker Natalia Almada captures the ruthless locomotion of technology. Her camera flies with ferocious speed alongside jet streams, trains, trucks, and underwater cables that carry data at the speed of light. But just as her lens documents the power of frenetic human invention, so does it dive into technology’s greatest existential competitor: rising oceans, crackling fires, scorched mountain tops—a planet at war with so-called societal progress. In the center of this storm, Almada’s young son stares unquestioningly into his computer screen and is rocked to sleep by a seamlessly paced electronic crib. He’s soothed by forces outside of Almada’s—or, for that matter, any parent’s—influence.

With transcendent camerawork that peers into the internal organs of a technologically dependent planet, Users both marvels at and fears for a world in which a child is not only at risk from a warming Earth but comes to trust a perfectly constructed artificial caretaker over his own biological mother.

Users (U.S.A./Mexico)
Directed by Natalia Almada
Produced by Elizabeth Lodge Stepp, Josh Penn
Executive Producers : Sean O'Grady, Bill Stertz, Charlotte Cook, Tony Hsieh, Roberto Grande, Mimi Pham, Kathryn Everett, Bryn Mooser, Noah Kadner, Rune Hansen, Mónica Reina
Co-Producers : Daniela Alatorre, Elivia Shaw
Music by Dave Cerf, Kronos Quartet
Sound Designer : Dave Cerf
Sound Mixers : Lora Hirschberg, Alejandro de Icaza
Cinematography : Bennett Cerf
Distributed by Altamura films (http://www.altamurafilms.com)
Release date : February 1, 2021 (Sundance)
Running time : 81 minutes

Premiere : feb. 1 - 12:00am // Second screening : feb. 2 - 4:00pm (local time)

(Source : press release)