Don't hate the media, become the media. Jello Biafra
valerie veatch
ghost in the machine
SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL | 2026
JAN 22 – FEB 1
World Premiere | NEXT Programme
Ghost in the Machine
Writer, Director, Producer: Valerie Veatch
Images © Stefan Berin / Valerie Veatch
JAN, 2, 2026
Ghost in the Machine approaches ubiquitous questions like “What is AI?”, “Who is building it?”, and “What will humans become?” by exploring how emerging technologies have historically reshaped identity, culture, and global power, while also exposing the current fronts of human exploitation without which AI would not function.
Hi Valerie, it’s such a pleasure to have this opportunity to talk with you about your latest documentary Ghost in the Machine, which will have its World Premiere at Sundance 2026. How does it feel to be back at the festival?
Thank you, it feels exciting and urgent at the same time. Sundance has long been a place where my work can breathe - and each time I’ve returned with a film that interrogates technology systems as they are becoming normalised. Coming back now with Ghost in the Machine feels familiar in intention, but the stakes could not be higher. The film asks big questions about the structure of power in tech and the futures we’re being told are inevitable. Independent voices in the documentary space can thrive at Sundance. I'm incredibly proud to be here, and grateful to the festival for fostering active, thoughtful questions about AI technologies and the people who make them.
Your first time at Sundance was with Me @ the Zoo in 2014, the film would win the New Vision Award at Sitges. What was that experience like for you?
Me @ the Zoo premiered at Sundance at a moment when the internet was still framed as playful and democratising. The internet was not yet fully understood as the power infrastructure we know it to be today. Me @ the Zoo revealed how platforms quietly reorder visibility and power and how we internalise this. In 2014 Love Child expanded on this work – looking closely at the psychologically addictive nature of screen based tech.
Making these films taught me that the large systems underlying our lives may feel abstract, but their real-life impacts on people are traceable and impossible to unsee once they are made visible. With Ghost in the Machine I excavate the origins of so-called ‘artificial intelligence’ documenting the contours of the ideologies shaping Big Tech and by extension, our world.
Did you imagine Me @ the Zoo would have the impact it had?
Me @ the Zoo has become a kind of accidental origin story for social media culture, with a loyal following that grew as audiences recognised their own online lives on screen. It was thrilling to bring the internet to the big screen, what one reviewer called the “cinema of social media” and, in hindsight, the film now feels like an instinctive attempt to probe and critique the myths Silicon Valley was already spinning about connection, community, progress, and their role in it. I think it did well in its context, I’m not sure it had the impact
It sounds a bit corny but do nerves ever set in ahead of a festival screening or are you able to just ride it all out now?
Bringing a film into the world is an intense act of vulnerability. Most of the time, filmmaking means sitting alone in a dark room, contemplating story structure, so it is always a genuine shock when other people finally watch the work. The joy of that moment never wears off.
With Ghost in the Machine, the vulnerability feels even sharper because of subject matter and the general atmosphere of AI hype, fear, myth, and uncertainty about the future. These questions can feel existential. The media industry right now is simply not structured to support projects like this. I’ve made this so far entirely independently funded, and having a world premiere at Sundance is something I don’t take for granted.
How did Ghost in the Machine come about, what inspired you to make explore the origins of AI?
The film asks what it means to build our future on the questionable foundations of artificial intelligence, and what gets erased when we pretend the technology is apolitical.
My own breaking point came when a friend signed me up for OpenAI’s “artist program” ahead of the first iteration of their video generator, Sora. What felt like access to a groundbreaking tool was a big disappointment with the sheer volume of racism and sexism in the generative AI video outputs, and I was even more disturbed by how concerns about this were brushed aside when artists in the group tried to raise them. There was this gaping disconnect between the lofty rhetoric about empowerment and creativity and the actual content being pushed into the world. Personally, I don’t want my daughters growing up thinking that this level of sexualised, racist output is normal, acceptable, or just ‘how the world is’ because it isn’t, and it shouldn’t be.
As an artist, it felt like a betrayal dressed up as innovation. Ghost in the Machine is the result of trying to understand, on my own terms, what all this hype is really about: how these generative systems work, whose values they encode, and who stands to profit from their frictionless, non‑consensual integration into every corner of our digital lives and creative tools.
The film confronts the Big Tech narrative of technological ‘optimism’, we present the story and let the audience form their conclusions.
During your research what were the most surprising things you discovered about these origins?
The eugenics to broligarchy pipeline and a realisation that the story of AI isn’t innovation at all, but an upgraded control fantasy, where everything and everyone is scored and steered. The film traces how eugenic theories of “general intelligence” quietly power today’s hunt for super-intelligence, following the line from early race science into modern AI labs, where the dream of a single, controllable “intelligence” still depends on sorting, optimising, and disciplining human beings.
With AI, in small and large ways, being so prevalent now in our society did you have any apprehensions about making a documentary that focuses on one of the most divisive political/cultural/social issues we’re facing?
Going against the current is not without friction, but conversations around AI have become so shallow and narrow-sighted, and so often pushed by Big Tech we’ve lost the big picture. AI is often framed as either salvation or doom, as one interviewee in the documentary says “building God in the most embarrassing way possible.” The real issues we face are the same issues we have faced with every technology before and after: governance, privacy, consent, and accountability. Ghost in the Machine is a necessary critique and an essential cornerstone for education around AI. It’s important for people to understand how AI is being built and used– by whom, and at whose expense. I learned a lot making this project.
Because of the gendered nature of AI* do you think coming at this subject from a female filmmakers lens has offered you a unique perspective on this topic?
Thank you for this question, you bring up a really important point when talking about stories addressing power and technology in general and also specifically the nature of LLMs.
Stories around technology and the future are often the domain of male filmmakers. Ghost in the Machine exposes the gendered nature of power and tech as a symptom of a broader malady when it comes to women in technology spaces and spaces of power.
As you’ll see in Ghost in the Machine we explore the concept of ‘artificial intelligence’ as a product of colonial, patriarchal, capitalist, extractive forces.
Along with this story coming from a female filmmaker (which I think does matter very much) it is also important to examine who is financing the stories about AI, who gets the mainstream support and distribution and what broader narratives around tech those projects push and who those narratives serve. Approaching this film from a feminist perspective has allowed me to hone in on the downstream impacts of it all– whose bodies, time, resources, and creativity are quietly extracted to sustain these systems.
At its core, this is a story about power and consent, it’s a deeply human one.
What have been the biggest challenge you’ve faced bringing Ghost in the Machine to the big screen?
Everyone in film right now whether you’re making docs or features has been feeling the squeeze on funding and access, but pushing a film that directly confronts Big Tech definitely intensified this pressure. This isn’t the first project I’ve received “can you pitch something less dystopic” feedback - if we look at the film production landscape, the main distributors and studios are enmeshed with Big Tech or are themselves Big Tech. I actually encountered a lot of “I’m sorry, we are actually launching an AI initiative / project and don’t feel a critical perspective would work for us right now” pushback when I first started pitching this project - a stance which just reaffirmed the need for a clear-eyed critique of the technology. So I just self-funded and along with family, friends, and foundation support, and I am proud to say this totally unique film is here today with its own essential perspective fully intact.
Since making Ghost in the Machine has your relationship with AI, and the continued conversation around its pros and cons, changed much?
In making this film, we’re shifting the conversation from comparing AI’s pros and cons to asking: who decides? Two things about AI feel clear: It isn't neutral and there is a lot of money and power pushing for its inclusion under the false narrative of inevitability. However, the way it shows up for us in the future is still to be determined by our direct action and political engagement with institutions of power regulating the infrastructure build out and the policymaking around its productisation. This realisation has made me all the more critical but more hopeful about our collective agency to take back the reins.
"It is hard for me to look away when something feels like injustice, and Ghost in the Machine is very much about that..."
Have you always had a passion for filmmaking?
Yes, when I was at Eugene Lang College at the New School in NYC I started making little essay docs presenting my various reflections on media and technology and really that is where a lot of this work started. It’s fun because my thesis advisor there was the amazing McKenzie Wark and she also appears in Ghost in the Machine. Being able to interview her two decades after being in her classroom, it felt rather full circle.
What was it about documentary as a medium that connected with you so much?
There is unrivalled beauty in the strangeness of truth. The surreal absurd contradictions contained in our reality make true stories effective vehicles to critique power.
What does your work say about you and the types of stories you want to bring to the world?
My work comes from a long-standing fascination with technology and the ways it shapes how we think and feel and even our culture. It’s driven by a need to tell stories that make room for real questions and for imagining different futures. It is hard for me to look away when something feels like injustice, and Ghost in the Machine is very much about that: the story of how Big Tech and so‑called “AI” are wrapped in glossy promises while running on forms of exploitation that are anything but fair.
Do you have any advice or tips you would offer an emerging documentary filmmaker?
You don’t have to make content for the algorithm, make the weird film!
And finally, what would you like your audiences to take away from Ghost in the Machine?
I hope audiences leave with the understanding that this is not a film about machines, it’s a film about power and those pulling the strings behind the scenes. AI is rapidly shaping our world, but it doesn’t have to strip us of our humanity or dignity. If we can understand the beliefs and histories that built these systems, we can begin to reclaim agency and reject this techno dystopia.