Found footage dystopia about a two-century relationship between humans and cameras
Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, "And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine" is a witty chronicle woven from hundreds of materials found on the internet, covering nearly 200 years of the history of imagery, from the invention of the camera obscura and the display of the first moving picture of a jockey on a horse to the advent of webcams and the first viral videos. The directorial duo of Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck blend historical footage of the coronation of Edward VII (to which the film's quirky title refers) and fragments of propagandistic films from the Third Reich with dozens of amateur video clips found on YouTube, television reports from war zones, clips of thrill-seeking enthusiasts hanging off skyscraper roofs, and recordings of Belle Delphine's streams, all for a simultaneously sarcastic and reverent essay exploring how imagery captures reality and manipulates our relationship to it.
Original language: Swedish, English, French, German, Arabic Subtitles: Belarusian | English