Dear Humans
2023 · 5m · Indonesia
Directed by Joo Peter
Genres: animation, satire, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
A dystopian animated satire about AI, inspired by Tarkovsky's Solaris - in which humans drown in an ocean of consciousness.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A Tarkovsky riff wrapped in AI-satire skin — competent, sure, but it's playing it safer than it thinks, genuinely interested in the philosophical weight rather than the subversive twist that would make this *dangerous*.
Peter understands the lineage here, the visual grammar of introspection and cosmic dread that Tarkovsky carved; the animation discipline required to sustain five minutes of drowning in consciousness without surrendering to spectacle shows genuine curatorial restraint.
The decision to animate this as an ocean of data rather than render it photorealistically is what unlocks it — that hand-drawn abstraction of consciousness lets the satire breathe where photorealism would've killed it with its own seriousness.
Festivals
- Hiroshima Animation Season 2024, Official Selection