Can’t Feel Nothing
David Borenstein / Denmark / 2024 / World Premiere / 81 min
An eye-opening film about numbness in the age of social media. The diagnosis is alarming, but it is made with understated humour and energy by director David Borenstein, himself a screen zombie in digital rehab.
A man lies in bed illuminated by the blue-white light of his mobile phone. On the doom timeline, he scrolls past cute pets, outraged opinion pieces and creepy images from the world’s hotspots – and he feels absolutely nothing. ‘Can’t Feel Nothing’ begins when director David Borenstein realises, much to his own surprise, that he himself has become a screen zombie. With great curiosity and refreshing humour, he travels the world to investigate how bad things really are. Who is pulling the strings when the internet makes us angry, sad, horny or just plain indifferent? And is there any way back? Borenstein meets an American internet troll, a burnt-out superstar in the Asian influencer industry, a cynical fake-news factory in Eastern Europe, Russian state propagandists and an online dominatrix who forces her male customers to punch themselves in the groin. An alarming and serious contemporary diagnosis, with the energy to also look at solutions.