backflip
2022 · 12m · Germany / France
Directed by Nikita Diakur
Genres: animation, comedy, documentary
Tones: absurdist, contemplative, humorous
After fear and a broken toe ended his real-life attempt at a backflip, animator Nikita Diakur trained a machine-learning avatar of himself — using the DeepMimic reinforcement-learning method — to perform the trick on his behalf. The result is a self-aware, three-year documentary on ambition, technological inevitability, and learning to let go.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A director trains an AI to finish what his body couldn't—it's absurdist self-help disguised as tech-doc, and the fact that it actually *works* as both comedy and philosophy is exactly the kind of premise that makes people say 'wait, WHAT?' before realizing he's onto something real.
Diakur positions himself in a lineage of self-reflexive documentary and avatar cinema, but what distinguishes this is the formal rigor of letting reinforcement learning's iterative failure become the film's editing rhythm—each fall is craft, each success is earned.
The decision to make the AI's countless physics-simulated failures the emotional spine instead of cutting away from them—that's the whole film right there, turning a training dataset into something genuinely moving about persistence and surrender.
Reviews
Backflip stands out for its depth and innovation — Diakur doesn't just employ machine learning as an easy gimmick; his film has a meaningful message and conveys it with great humour and insight.
The result is repeatedly humorous and utterly fascinating.
Festivals
- Festival du nouveau cinéma 2022, New Alchemists Animated Short Film Award
- Encounters Film Festival 2022
- Toronto International Film Festival 2023
- Norwich Film Festival 2022