The AI Doc: How I Became an Apocaloptimist
Daniel Roher & Charlie Tyrell / United States / 2026 / International Premiere / 104 min
AI is changing the world as we know it. An Oscar-winning director asks all the questions that keep him awake at night in a compelling and urgent film with great creative energy.
When Daniel Roher and his partner learn that they are expecting their first child, his joy is accompanied by a growing unease. In record time, artificial intelligence has gone from being a closed experiment to global common property. Is this a good or bad time to bring a child into the world?
In search of answers, he builds a film studio in his home and invites researchers, critics and the most powerful players in the global AI game – from Yuval Harari and Tristan Harris to the directors of OpenAI, DeepMind and Anthropic – to share their thoughts and concerns and to discuss possible scenarios for a future with AI. They paint widely differing pictures of the technological (r)evolution, ranging from technological utopia to outright doom. The balance between technological progress and existential catastrophe is delicate.
Roher received an Oscar for ‘Navalny’ (CPH:DOX 2022), and with creative energy and intellectual acuity, he asks the questions we all want answers to in a phenomenally compelling, paradoxically entertaining and, above all, very human film about the most urgent issue of our time.
