lyrical, fiction, scripts

“The ethereal essay provides a bounty of poetry […] the instinctual narration is what grips the viewer”
– Rogerebert.com

“An intricately crafted voice-over by Tilda Swinton, melding together historic fact and contemporary theories”
– Screen International

Dreams Rewired (Manu Luksch, Martin Reinhart, Thomas Tode, 2015)
Feature-length essay articulates the social convulsions of today’s hyper-mediated world through a montage of 200 films from the 1880s to the 1930s, tracing contemporary desires and anxieties back to when telephone, film and television were as revolutionary as contemporary social media is today.
–> IMDb
Transcript in the Core Collection, Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences

Cowriter, Faceless

“Dares its audience to question their own culpability in this all too real state of affairs”
– The Guardian

“Situates itself effortlessly in the middle of our ‘modern’ paranoias […] ‘art’ by its most undebatable criterion.”
– Chris Marker

Faceless (Manu Luksch, 2007)
Science-fiction feature film uses CCTV images obtained under the terms of UK and EU data protection laws as ‘legal readymades’; plot and scenario emerge from the material properties of the images.
–> IMDb
Collection Centre Georges Pompidou, BFI National Archive

Cowriter, Algo-Rhythm

“Data dust … used for algorithmic electioneering to enforce authoritarian, anti-democratic policies.”
– ZONTA Award Jury Statement, 65th Kurzfilmfest Oberhausen

Algo-Rhythm (Manu Luksch, 2019)
Data-driven hiphop musical brings together leading Senegalese musicians, poets and graffiti artists to probe the insidious but comprehensive threats to human rights and agency posed by the rise of algorithmic management
–> IMDb
Lyrics in French and Wolof based on original text by Manu Luksch & Mukul Patel, co-written with Gunman Xuman and Keyti Cheikh Séne