All Light, Everywhere (2021) - Theo Anthony

A cinematic essay in which the observational eye and its technological-enabled extensions are deconstructed through an expansive conceptual framework. Theo Anthony's All Light Everywhere is a beautifully rendered evocation on the act of seeing which skillfully navigates the strictures of contemporary discourse to reveal an epistemological work on humanity's gradual progression away from knowing through experience towards one solely defined by the authority of technological-induced progress and projection. Never prescriptive yet consistently assured, All Light, Everywhere examines the tenuous relationship between the state and its citizenry, with knowing through artificial intelligence and algorithms fortifying institutional power structures that have long relied on the illusion of knowing through the power to maintain control. The technological induced surveillance state and its progressive dehumanizing modes of seeing are purveyed through a cinematic language that is highly precise in thematic intent yet infectiously inquisitive. Moments throughout this film's distinctive framework may feel tangential at first, yet they form a holistic thematic study, one in which the intimacy of ontology is erected against the backdrop of the surveillance state and the pervasive effects it has had on the social fabric of society.