Synthetic Politics
Year: 2026
Duration: 11 minutes
Country: Germany
Genre: Animation \ AI \ Essay
Technical: 4K DCI | Color | 5.1 Surround Sound
Premiere: Pornfilm Festival Berlin 2026
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NO DATA CENTERS HAVE BEEN USED IN THE MAKING OF THIS FILM
An AI-generated film about the process of AI filmmaking, featuring Slim Vaders, who argues that cinema, AI, and pornography are NOT political. The piece serves as a satirical parody of Wim Wenders' remarks at the 2026 Berlinale (and later double down on it during the Venice Film Festival) concerning the nature of cinema and its detachment from politics. This reflexive essay film explores a potential future where AI dominates media and pornography, posing a critical question: Do privileged white men control AI in the same way they control women?
* The film also addresses ethical questions about the making of this very film and other deep fakes.
World Premiere:
Pornfilm Festival Berlin (2026)
Official Selections:
Director's Statement
I was shocked by the tone-deaf remarks of Wim Wenders at the 2026 Berlinale when asked about empathy toward Gaza. At the time, I was also learning how to use ComfyUI to generate video and sound locally on my own workstation. While watching online tutorials, I discovered that most were made by privileged white dudes demonstrating how to generate and "control" images and videos of women.
Synthetic Politics is an inevitable result of coming to terms with my new reality as a Jewish non-Zionist filmmaker in Berlin 2026, who is being gas lit by German politicians and has seen my artistic work silently boycotted. I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could make a smart essay film about AI, art, and politics while using AI locally. I wanted to try and make a film in my unique style of essay-comedy-erotic filmmaking with a progressive queer political touch, all while using the tools that could potentially destroy the film industry.