Official selection
SXSW Film Festival 2020, Cleveland International Film Festival 2020, 2020 Bucheon Int'l Fantastic Film Festival, Jury's Choice Award
Director
Noah Hutton
Writer
Noah Hutton
Cast
Ivory Aquino, Arliss Howard, Babe Howard, Dean Imperial, Dora Madison, James McDaniel, Madeline Wise, Frank Wood
Producer
Taylor Hess, Jesse Miller, Joseph Varca
Cinematographer
Mike Gomes
Sound Designer
Josh Heilbronner
Composer
Noah Hutton
Editor
Noah Hutton
contact
Lapsis Beeftech LLC
Official website
Sketchy delivery man Ray Tincelli (a memorable Dean Imperial) struggles to support himself and his ailing brother. After a series of dead-end hustles, he takes a job in a strange new realm of the gig economy: the “cabling” business, which involves an army of independent contractors with no benefits (of course) tasked with pulling miles of cable over treacherous terrain to connect the emerging, quantum-encoded trading market (a new technology set to revolutionize world finance for a fortunate few)! As Ray treks deeper and deeper into the forest, a bizarre work environment unfolds before his eyes: veteran cablers outwardly hostile to his username, robot rivals meant to increase productivity, and a bubbling workers’ insurgency that our lapsed delivery man might inadvertently be a crucial part of…
A chillingly pertinent tale, Noah Hutton follows activist documentaries DEEP TIME and CRUDE INDEPENDENCE (about fossil fuel and sustainability) with a striking fictional debut: a brilliant science-fictional skewering of the absurdity of contemporary capitalist practices. Hutton’s critique leaves no stones unturned, whether it’s the booming gig and sharing economies (think Uber or Airbnb); Big Pharma and its insidious regime of healthcare profiteering (where corporations profit off of avertable illnesses) or the increasing Silicon Valley-driven game-ification and app-ification of labour (the film itself smartly structured as a goal-oriented quest, in which Ray encounter a series of strange revelations). In the vein of BLACK MIRROR, LAPSIS is especially relevant to our current late-capitalist moment: a cautionary tale, not of the near-future, but of our all-too familiar, and utterly chilling present of increased inequality, corporate monopoly, faceless capital and deregulated labour. Speculative fiction at its most urgent. – Ariel Esteban Cayer
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