With: Domhnall Gleeson (Caleb), Alicia Vikander (Ava), Oscar Isaac (Nathan), Sonoya Mizuno (Kyoko), Corey Johnson (Jay), Claire Selby (Lily), Symara Templeman (Jasmine), Gana Bayarsaikahn (Jade), Tiffany Pisani (Katya), Lina Alminas (Amber)
Director/Screenplay: Alex Garland
Producers: Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich
Production co: DNA Films
Photography: Rob Hardy
Editor: Mark Day
Music: Geoff Barrow, Ben Salisbury
REVIEWS

Novelist and screenwriter Alex Garland (The Beach) makes a decisive directorial debut with this smart, sleekly designed and flawlessly performed psy-fi drama.

“Ava (Alicia Vikander) doesn’t mean to scare you.  She only wants to get inside your head.  The heroine of Alex Garland’s Ex Machina has sharp blue eyes, an even, inquisitive voice and skin so clear it seems to soften the air around it.  She’s also a robot, pieced together by a reclusive genius in a house shrouded by mountains, and her thought processes are sparked by the terms millions of humans are keying into Blue Book, the world’s most popular internet search engine… 

Ava’s creator, the alpha-male tech guru Nathan (Oscar Isaac), describes his eureka moment thusly: it was when he realised that Blue Book didn’t simply tell him what people all over the world were thinking, but how they were thinking too…  Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) has won a staff lottery to visit Nathan at his isolated home-slash-HQ, a helicopter ride away, to bear witness to the company’s top-secret new product… The aim of the week-long visit is for Caleb to carry out a Turing Test: over the course of seven daily encounters with Ava, he has to get to know her and decide whether or not she can pass for a human being…

This is bewitchingly smart science fiction of a type that’s all too rare. Its intelligence is anything but artificial.”

— Robbie Collin, The Telegraph
FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Carterton
Friday, 2 February, 7:30pm

New Plymouth
Wednesday, 4 April, 6:00pm

Dunedin
Wednesday, 25 April, 7:30pm

Queenstown
Tuesday, 1 May, 8:15pm

Nelson
Thursday, 10 May, 6:00pm

Palmerston North
Monday, 21 May, 6:00pm

Waitati
Tuesday, 29 May, 8:00pm
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Whanganui
Monday, 11 June, 7:00pm
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