2021 | Short Fiction | HD (Arri Alexa) | 16 minutes

 

in collaboration with Johannes Büttner

 

Platform is based on documentary interviews with freelancers on online delivery platforms and interweaves their experiences with references to Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, a visionary 1992 cyberpunk that has come to occupy the status of a Silicon Valley bible. The film explores the extent to which the dystopian capitalist cyberpunk nightmare described in the novel corresponds to the real capitalist nightmare in which we already live. 

 

 

Platform intertwines the stories of our research participants with elements from Stephenson’s novel to create a looping narrative that indiscernibly moves from the documentary to the fictitious, drawing the audience ever deeper into the absurdities and abysses of these new work realities. Eschewing a conventional documentary aesthetics, the drivers’ stories are staged as film scenes that create a Sci-Fi representation of their work experiences and labor struggles. Mixing live-action footage with material generated with the computer graphics engines of popular computer games (a style of filmmaking known as machinima) we not only explore the increasingly blurred border between work and leisure, but also want to raise broader questions about immaterial work and value creation in the digital economy.

 

CAST

Roberto Anjari Rossi

Kumar Muniandy

Boris Dikelo

Tyrone Raymond

Yasmin El Yassini

Jan Koslowski

Lola Abrera

 

 

CREW

Director | Steffen Köhn and Johannes Büttner

Screenwriter | Steffen Köhn and Johannes Büttner      

Director of Photography | Patrick Jasmim, Phillip Kaminiak    

Editor |Gines Olivares       

3D Artist & VFX Supervision | Alexander Bley

Producer| Paola Calvo, Patrick Jasim, Phillip Kaminiak

Music | Johannes Klingebiel

Sound Design | Lorenz Fischer     

 

SCREENINGS

• 28th Slamdance, Park City

• 43rd Max Ophüls Preis Film Festival, Saarbrücken

• 34rd Filmfest Dresden

• 3rd Social and Economic Justice Film Festival, San Francisco

• 11th CineGlobe CERN, Geneva

• 28th L’Étrange Festival, Paris

• 19th Cheongju International Short Film Festival (CISFF) of Korea, Cheongju

• 28th Festival International du Film de Nancy

• 66th BFI Film Festival London

• 21st FILMZ Festival Mainz

• 4th Chungbuk International Martial Arts & Action Film Festival

 

(c) TUMULT FILM

funded by: Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film, Mondriaan Funds