The Artifice Girl (2023)
Director: Franklin Ritch Run Time: 93 min. Release Year: 2023
Starring: David Girard, Franklin Ritch, Lance Henriksen, Sinda Nichols, Tatum Matthews
Country: United States
Language: English
About the film:
Best International Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Film Festival
She’s not real. She’s more than that. A small team of special agents discovers a revolutionary computer program that uses a digital child to catch online predators. After teaming up with the program’s troubled developer, they soon find that the AI’s inevitable advancement is far more rapid and incalculable than they could have imagined, posing unforeseen challenges and unsettling consequences for the future of technology and mankind.
“A bold new voice in science fiction is here… The Artifice Girl is a tremendous example of indie sci-fi done right.”
The film went on to receive a nomination for the John Cassavetes Award – given to the best feature made for under $1 million – at the 2024 Independent Spirit Awards.
About the filmmaker:
Franklin Ritch is a story-driven film writer, director, editor, and actor who was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2022. His debut feature The Artifice Girl (2023) premiered at the 2022 Fantasia Film Festival where it won the Audience Award for Best International Feature and later took the top prize at Italy’s Trieste Festival. In the film, Ritch plays the computer programmer Gareth as a younger man. He previously presented several short films on the festival circuit, including Bedridden (2018) and The 27 Deaths (2021) at Fantastic Fest. He founded the independent film studio Last Resort Ideas to tell unique and compelling stories through film, web-series, music videos, and video games.
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