The Cleaners

The Cleaners
dir.Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck/Germany, Brazil/2018/88 min.
place
date
time

Enter a hidden third world shadow industry of digital cleaning, where the Internet rids itself of what it doesn‘t like. Here we meet five “digital scavengers”, among thousands of people outsourced from Silicon Valley, whose job is to delete “inappropriate” content of the net. In a parallel struggle, we meet people around the globe whose lives are dramatically affected by online censorship. A typical “cleaner” must observe and rate thousands of often deeply disturbing images and videos every day, leading to lasting psychological impacts.

Yet underneath their work lie profound questions around what makes an image art or propaganda and what defines journalism. Where exactly is the point of balance for social media to be neither an unlegislated space nor a forum rife with censorship? THE CLEANERS struggles to come to terms with this new and disconcerting paradigm. Evolving from a shared social vision of a global village to a web of fake news and radicalization, the film charts the rise and fall of social media’s utopian ideology.

READ MORE
HIDE

  • projection time:
    88 min.
  • country/year:
    Germany, Brazil/2018
  • director:
  • pictures:
    Axel Schneppat, Max Preiss
  • production:
    Gebrüder Beetz Filmproduktion
  • selected festivals and awards:
    2018 – CPH:DOX Copenhagen, 2018 – IFF Rotterdam

Other movies on this section

So what’s next in this world?

Desert of the Real
Ex Shaman
Possessed
Other movies on this tags

# internet

​The Girl of 672k
The Cleaners
The Future of Work and Death
Other movies from this contest

Lower Silesia Grand Prix

Generation Wealth
The Waldheim Waltz
Eldorado
 
Doc shop
Buy our films on DVD
NEWSLETTER
Sign up and stay up to date