Lulu

Director's note

The idea of Lulu was born out of an incident several years ago, after the viral success of text-to-image generators. A friend of mine sent me a screenshot of an anonymous user trying to generate an image of a naked little girl. The user was quickly banned, but we both knew that it was only a matter of time until someone made their own image generator, one with no censorship or moderation. Since then, there have been multiple cases of both female celebrities and regular women being the victims of deepfake pornography.
There are many possible stories to tell here, and many angles to explore. The one I found myself gravitating towards was inspired by two factors. The first one is having friends who have worked as content moderators for social media. I have seen the effects the job has had on them, how they became more closed off, irritable and stressed. Having heard stories of the images they were exposed to and the effects they had on them. The second inspiring factor was the simple observable fact that capitalism loves to sell us solutions to problems it created. So it seemed very plausible to me that governments would struggle to adapt quickly enough and would instead prefer to outsource the job of dealing with the AI pornography crisis to private companies.
So what would the effect be on the people hired to do it? Content moderators are already struggling with high levels of PTSD, panic attacks, alcohol abuse and other adverse effects caused by the job. Now add to this the new AI wrinkle, the inability to reliably discern if what you are seeing is even real. I envision Lulu as an exploration of a troubled character who cannot dig himself out of a rabbit hole and a corporate culture that does not know how to help the people it hurts on its way to maximise profits.

Producer's note

My motivation for producing Lulu is deeply tied to a growing concern about the speed at which technological systems are introduced into everyday life without corresponding structures of care or protection for the people operating within them. As artificial intelligence and automated systems become increasingly embedded in society, responsibility is quietly displaced from corporations to individuals, from institutions to workers– often without protective measures in place.
History shows us that regulation tends to arrive only after damage has been done. Karl Benz built the first automobile in 1885. Yet it took over 80 years for comprehensive vehicle safety standards to be introduced. In today's rapidly changing world, we are witnessing a similar delay in accountability in digital labour and AI-driven environments. Lulu responds to this gap– not as a manifesto, but as a human story that exposes the emotional and psychological cost of working inside opaque, profit-driven systems.

We believe Lulu has strong international relevance. Issues of digital labour, content moderation, and technological overreach transcend borders, and the film is being developed with this global resonance in mind. We are proud to be collaborating with our co-producers Moderato (France) and A Group Therapy (Germany), whose creative and ethical alignment has been invaluable. The project has been selected for the LIM² Development Programme 2026, which confirms its artistic and thematic potential.

Lulu is a micro-budget feature, but one driven by ambition rather than limitation. With the right partners– sales agents, broadcasters, distributors, and financiers– we aim to create a film that is formally daring and socially resonant. At its core, this is a story about a group of misfits navigating extraordinary systems, and the quiet damage that occurs when progress moves faster than responsibility.