Deepfake Turns A Harrowing Eye Towards Personal Identity At Tribeca [EXCLUSIVE CLIP]
Deepfake is premiering at Tribeca this week, and The Mary Sue has an exclusive clip from the new film!
Filmmaker Matt Eames is bringing Deepfake to Tribeca on June 6th. In this new feature, Jessica DiGiovanni plays Jane. She is a millennial who after a heroin breakup hires a team of Gen Z consultants to get her life back on track. But, what happens when you outsource your entire identity to strangers?
In the clip, Jane is walking her new consultants through her wardrobe. (Avery your eyes fellow Milennials, she’s got all of the staples!) You can feel your bones creak the moment one of the painfully cool girls says the words, “I love the idea of a ‘retro wardrobe.’”
You should check it out for yourself right here. Deepfake really has a lot of the same strands film fans might recognize from a movie like Perfect Blue or Black Swan! At first, things aren’t insidious and then things begin to unravel and in a hurry.
In particular, Millennials have felt the dreadful tug that they’re not at the center of the pop culture universe anymore. (This has been ongoing for around a half-decade or so now!) But, morphing into a different person to still feel “hip” is mortifying for a lot of the generation.
Maybe, Deepfake can help start some conversations? Here’s how Bay Back Studios explains the new movie. “After a breakup, rudderless millennial Jane hires a team of Gen-Z consultants to reinvent her life. But what begins as a makeover soon spirals into a sharp social media satire about image, app culture, and the cost of becoming someone else.”
Deepfake examines personal identity in the social media present
After watching that exclusive clip, we’re even more interested in what Deepfake is putting down. Director Matt Eames has a lot to say about how we construct our personal identities through the lens of a smartphone screen.
In his statement of directorial intent, the filmmaker lays forth a vision for how these little rectangles help shape everything about us in the year 2026.
Eames begins, “There used to be a trope in 80s sitcoms where an unwanted side character – usually an in-law, neighbor or co-worker – would always be trying to invite themselves over to share a slide projector full of vacation photos. And protagonists, knowing full well the boredom that lay in store, would go to great lengths to avoid it.”
“Hard cut to today, and the slide projector has been replaced by Instagram, and these in-laws, neighbors and coworkers no longer have to go door-to-door, but can spam everyone simultaneously from their phone,” he added. “And what was once a faux pas has become de rigueur.”
What it feels like to be online
“I’ve never had a good time online. I’ve never felt a rush of endorphins while staring at my phone; never closed the laptop with a contented sigh; never thought to myself “that was a good one” after wrapping up a night of aimless scrolling,” the director continued. “The feelings I usually come away with are a mix of disgust and despair. And yet I keep coming back for more.”
“I tried my best to capture that juxtaposition with Deepfake, along with all of the other anxieties of living a life online,” Eames concludes. “The Internet is a place where self-esteem goes to die. Hopefully with this movie, people will be able to laugh along the way.”
There’s a lot to unpack there. And, we can’t wait to do it when Deepfake premieres at Tribeca on June 6.
(Photo Credit: Tribeca)
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