Icarus Films will release Users, the most recent film by acclaimed director and recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award Natalia Almada. Winner of the Documentary Director Award at the Sundance Film Festival—a second win for Almada in the same category after her 2009 documentary El General—Users opens Friday, June 9 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in New York City, and on Friday, June 16 at the Laemmle Glendale in Los Angeles, before expanding to other cities in North America.
The New York theatrical run of Users at BAM will be paired with a complete retrospective of Natalia Almada’s filmography, running June 9-13 and screening her short All Water Has a Perfect Memory (2001), her documentary features Al Otro Lado (2005), El General (2009), El Velador: The Night Watchman (2011), and her debut fiction feature Everything Else (Todo lo demás, 2016).
With a score performed by Grammy-winning Kronos Quartet, Users is a timely and intimate essay on technology and its effects on our everyday lives. The film begins with a mother’s question – will my children love the perfect machines more than they love me, their imperfect mother? She pushes the button, and a smart crib lulls her crying baby to sleep, flawlessly every time. This question guides her inquiry into the intimate relationship we have with technology that is increasingly driving all aspects of our society.
Users explores the unintended and often dehumanizing consequences of our society’s embedded belief that technological progress will lead to the betterment of humanity. Is technological progress inevitable? Are we all increasingly isolated? Do we really have agency to direct its course? Is technology an expression of our humanity or is technology destroying our humanity?
With impeccable cinematography by Bennett Cerf and an intricate sound design by David Cerf, Users traverses places ranging from the largest indoor vertical farm in the world to the perfect artificial wave, from an IVF embryo lab to a fiber optic cable landing. Invisible infrastructure that we all rely on is made visible. Our reliance on machines and our alienation from each other is palatable. Urgent global issues like climate change and privacy are explored from the intimate perspective of a mother thinking, worrying and loving her children.
Watch the trailer for Users directed by Natalia Almada.