New short film released of James Graham’s PEOPLE YOU MAY KNOW
Photo credit: Financial Times
James Graham’s new short film People You May Know on the growing influence of big data and algorithms on our day-to-day lives, starring Lydia West and Arthur Darvill, has been released today.
Directed by the FT's Juliet Riddell, People You May Know investigates how the response to COVID-19 has accelerated the intrusion of the data state into people’s private and emotional lives and what it might mean for our future. It revolves around the interrogation of a junior barrister, played by Lydia West (It’s A Sin), and Arthur Darvill (Doctor Who, Broadchurch), a data analyst from a private software firm, about her behaviour during lockdown, as monitored by her internet-connected devices.
As part of the research for the film, James Graham, along with representatives of Sonia Friedman Productions, met a group of leading Financial Times tech journalists and experts to discuss the role of data and the reach of algorithms in society today.
FT Assistant Editor Janine Gibson said: “Our goal for FT Film is to continue to innovate and develop compelling stories. In collaborating with the arts world, journalists can learn new ways of communicating the real-world impact behind the facts we uncover. The results, as shown by this film, can be truly powerful.”
Sonia Friedman said: “Drama, like journalism, exists to ask important questions of the contemporary world and one of those questions is our relationship to data. The advantages of our information age have rarely been as overt as in this extraordinary year, but as James Graham’s potent and unsettling theatrical short film People You May Know makes clear, they are not without disconcerting and complicated trade-offs. James is a writer with the keenest of moral compasses, and his astute dramatic eye – along with pinpoint performances by Lydia West and Arthur Darvill – brings a flush of feeling to the Financial Times’ rigorous journalistic enquiry.”
You can watch the short film via the Financial Times (FT) website and their YouTube channel.
