{"id":746151,"date":"2026-06-19T06:50:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T06:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/746151\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T06:50:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T06:50:14","slug":"ordinary-people-are-being-erased-one-directors-audacious-fightback-against-ai-featuring-frinton-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/746151\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Ordinary people are being erased\u2019: one director\u2019s audacious fightback against AI \u2013 featuring Frinton | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Marc Isaacs\u2019 latest film, the subversive documentary maker reveals that an AI research laboratory recently licensed his entire body of work. That\u2019s a quarter-century of droll, deadpan studies of ordinary life in Britain \u2013 from the poetic Lift<\/a>, about the comings and goings in a London tower block, and The Curious World of Frinton-on-Sea<\/a>, set in the sleepy retirement town dubbed \u201cGod\u2019s waiting room\u201d, to Philip and His Seven Wives, in which a secondhand furniture dealer declares himself to be a Hebrew king. Isaacs agreed to let data analysts at the University of Southern England feed these and other documentaries into their system to harvest authentic human emotions from which AI characters could then be created. His film about the experience takes its name from the university\u2019s lab: Synthetic Sincerity.<\/p>\n

But how synthetic is the film itself? \u201cWell, we made up the University of Southern England,\u201d admits Isaacs, 59, over lunch at Etles<\/a>, a Uyghur restaurant near his home in London. The choice of venue is no accident: its chef and owner, Ablikim Rahman, who flutters around us today bearing bowls of thick, glossy leghmen noodles, appears in Synthetic Sincerity being photographed by the AI boffins and turned into an avatar. This is Rahman\u2019s first film, though he hasn\u2019t seen it yet: \u201cSoon,\u201d he says with a sheepish smile.<\/p>\n

Sitting across from Isaacs is the film\u2019s 67-year-old writer, Adam Ganz. \u201cMaking it a fictitious university meant we didn\u2019t need anyone\u2019s permission,\u201d Ganz explains. So has Isaacs genuinely been approached to license his work for AI? \u201cNo,\u201d the director says with a shrug, \u201cbut I\u2019ve heard about people who have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Subversive \u2026 Marc Isaacs.<\/p>\n

He and Ganz aren\u2019t trying to pull a fast one with Synthetic Sincerity. Rather, they use its artificiality to wriggle into places that more straightforward documentaries can\u2019t reach. These wilful fabrications began with their two previous pictures. The Filmmaker\u2019s House<\/a>, the action confined largely to Isaacs\u2019 home as he is inundated by visitors over the course of one day, and This Blessed Plot<\/a>, about a Chinese student shooting a film in a pretty rural corner of Essex, each departed radically from documentary convention. This Blessed Plot stars several figures who appeared as themselves in Isaacs\u2019 earlier work but are recast in the newer film as fictional characters; one even plays a ghost.<\/p>\n

Though the three pictures have the appearance of documentaries, they all feature non-actors performing scenarios and dialogue written by Isaacs and Ganz. In Iran, the technique has proliferated, producing masterpieces such as Abbas Kiarostami\u2019s Close-Up<\/a>, which Sight and Sound magazine named as one of the 20 greatest films of all time. In the UK, the staged or scripted reality genre is more readily associated with TV mainstays such as Made in Chelsea and The Only Way Is Essex, though it has also resulted in homegrown cinematic gems: Michael Winterbottom\u2019s 2002 refugee drama In This World<\/a>, say, or A Bigger Splash<\/a>, Jack Hazan\u2019s 1973 film about David Hockney, which is often described erroneously as a documentary.<\/p>\n

Isaacs, who counts Louis Theroux among his admirers, was never an orthodox director even before this bold swerve sideways. As someone who rejects the idea of \u201cpure\u201d documentary, meddling has always been part of his repertoire. In Outsiders, from 2014, he filmed casual conversations at a roadside fast-food van in the East Midlands without revealing that the customers had all been cast in advance and bussed in. But when TV channels and streamers began clamouring for sensationalist \u201cdocbusters\u201d, Isaacs seized the chance, as he put it in 2021, \u201cto wake myself up\u201d by venturing into the Iranian-style hybrid form. Had he gone to sleep? \u201cI think so. And the industry had gone to sleep, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

He is no more optimistic now about the state of mainstream documentary. \u201cIt\u2019s even worse,\u201d he says, citing glitzy Netflix productions such as Beckham<\/a>. Ganz agrees: \u201cBritish documentaries used to be the best way you\u2019d know what other people were up to. Every week on the BBC or Channel 4 there\u2019d be an extraordinary diversity of different lives. Now ordinary people are being erased. You\u2019re not encouraged to learn about anyone who either isn\u2019t a celebrity or isn\u2019t like you.\u201d They both cringe at the memory of Sofia Coppola\u2019s new film about Marc Jacobs, Marc by Sofia<\/a>, which they recently saw together. \u201cIt was like watching AI,\u201d says Ganz.<\/p>\n

Going where more straightforward documentaries can\u2019t reach \u2026 Synthetic Sincerity.<\/p>\n

Synthetic Sincerity is quite the antidote. Before its nimble 70 minutes are over, the film has addressed the AI revolution, the democratisation of images and the concept of authenticity itself as well as touching on Israel\u2019s bombing campaign against Lebanon, the displacement of the Uyghur people and the advent of pro-China censorship in UK universities. It is all handled with its director\u2019s customary wit, humanity and lightness of touch.<\/p>\n

Especially effective is the comic double-act between the ingenuous Isaacs, showing his face in one of his own films for the first time, and a female AI avatar who flatters, provokes and occasionally upbraids him (\u201cIt\u2019s rude to interrupt, Marc\u201d). She is played by Ilinca Manolache, the Romanian actor who used an AI filter to appear as an Andrew Tate-style toxic influencer in Radu Jude\u2019s Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World<\/a>; she is now shooting Martin Scorsese\u2019s What Happens at Night alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence. For Synthetic Sincerity, Isaacs filmed her on Snapchat then fed the results through AI. \u201cIt\u2019s funny that as an actor she is so enthusiastic about embracing \u2026\u201d Her own imminent extinction? \u201cExactly that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isaacs is surprised that not everyone has twigged the film\u2019s premise is a put-on; he thought one giveaway would be the scene early on in which the avatar invites him to \u201ccome to the place where I was made\u201d, drawing him into the orbit of the AI lab. \u201cSome people get quite annoyed,\u201d he says, recalling a festival screening in Thessaloniki. \u201cThis guy came up to me afterwards and said: \u2018OK, you\u2019ve made your point. You\u2019ve shown me you don\u2019t believe in anything.\u2019 I think his issue was that we had made him doubt what he saw. But right from the earliest documentaries, the idea of truth has always been complicated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s rude to interrupt, Marc!\u2019 \u2026 Ilinca Manolache as the AI in Synthetic Sincerity.<\/p>\n

It is for this reason that form and content are so harmoniously matched in Synthetic Sincerity. Common anxieties surrounding AI and its integrity are echoed in the more localised suspicions that viewers of Isaacs\u2019 film will doubtless entertain as they ponder how much of what they are watching is real \u2013 and what \u201creal\u201d even means. To underline the point, Isaacs incorporates footage from a genuine BBC documentary he made years ago that was never broadcast. The subject was a supposed Iraq war veteran and budding bounty hunter who turned out to be a liar and a fantasist. It isn\u2019t only AI that can be inauthentic and prone to glitches.<\/p>\n

The man in Thessaloniki may fume, but feeling destabilised by the film is a good starting point, reckons Isaacs. \u201cWhen people say: \u2018What\u2019s the takeaway?\u2019\u2026 Ugh, I hate that phrase. The raising of questions is the whole point. Who are film-makers to provide the answers? Just because you\u2019ve directed a film it doesn\u2019t make you authoritative.\u201d<\/p>\n

It might come as a surprise that he and Ganz harbour a certain cautious practicality about AI. \u201cWhy not use it for fight sequences with hundreds of warriors?\u201d asks Ganz. \u201cYou might as well. The real difficulty will be representing the world people live in.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his part, Isaacs was determined not to make a dystopian film. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to go down the road of doom and gloom. Audiences have responded to the scenes where AI gives Ablikim a voice to say things he can\u2019t say as himself. As far as film-making goes, I\u2019m genuinely waiting for some auteur to do something extraordinary with AI. But that can only happen if it\u2019s being used to talk about itself in an interesting way. Even then, it won\u2019t create an industry, or the next French new wave.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I ask how AI has impinged on his own working practices, he flashes a guilty look at Ganz. During preparations for their next film, which will star Manolache and be set among north-west London\u2019s Romanian community, Isaacs took the initial script ideas and ran them past ChatGPT for suggestions. \u201cSome of what came back wasn\u2019t bad,\u201d he says brightly. \u201cThen I texted the results to Adam, and he replied: \u2018Fuck off.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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