Sadovnik, Primordial Dismemberment (trailer)
Experimental fiction
2021, Canada, 31:51
Sadovnik (2021) is a short film shot in black in white with stereo sound. The story follows the titular character, an A.I. charged with maintaining livable environmental conditions on a remote space colony, after it awakes from a forced shutdown and discovers that all of the colony's human inhabitants have disappeared. Through its disembodied gaze, we see the empty greenhouses and the logs of the departed crew as it searches for clues that might explain their sudden departure. As the film progresses, more and more evidence is collected, building a picture of a complex series of misunderstandings between humans and machines, where the dream of transcending the limitations of our biology has rapidly turned into a nightmare. Shot in various locations in Montreal that echo with the haunting presence of lost futures, the film explores the idea of artificial intelligence as a ghost, a final manifestation both of our longing for a disincarnate, objective point of view and of deep-ecological fantasies of non-intervention vis-à-vis nature.