The message is ubiquitous: A.I. is here, and it’s probably going to take your job. Pranav Bhasin’s comic mockumentary—which was executive-produced by the actors Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Andrew Scott, and which won the Audience Award for Short Narrative at this year’s SXSW festival—flips the script with its vision of tech backlash. The film, set in an Indian town, follows the exploits of three retirees named Bagchi, Pimple, and Ganguli, who are fighting back and taking the jobs of machines. Bagchi, decked out in silver body paint, has declared himself a dish antenna; his friends are “working” as a vehicle’s reverse camera and a microwave. “This is a revolt,” Bagchi says, “a war cry.”
Together, the men wage an absurd, gleeful battle against technology. They invade an appliance store and tell smart devices the wrong names for things; they make a lo-fi infomercial and shout slogans out of car windows. But at the core of their silliness is a serious message: human effort and creativity are irreplaceable. When one of their sons gets a job at a tech firm, he finds that the older men’s assault on technology might not have been as futile as it seemed.
