Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: LIFEHACK [SXSW Film 2025 - Austin, Texas]
The aspect of life on screen depends on the people willing to take the risk. With "Lifehack" [Narrative Spotlight], the idea revolves on the real world and the idea of intention that becomes reality. Like in certain reflections of "Dumb Money" but with much more specified intention versus the flip, this film is about undoing the system while taking into account that there are loopholes to any space. It just depends on how much one wants to wrestle with the dragon. The sophistication of what people can do online has changed since producer Timur Bekmambetov (known for his bigger action pictures) started integrating with the Screenlife format (which is more his invention). While some of these films work better than others, it does come down to execution. The aspect of accessing CCTV cameras and spot focusing where people are on a grid and their social media footprint has only become more defined (as well as the hacking of passwords) in recent years. This has likely also more emboldened the youth in terms of what they can and what they want to accomplish.
Director Ronan Corrigan says this mostly built out of COVID. He had seen a competition that Bekmanbetov had put together. Finding the right actors does help but there is an interesting sense of arrogance and conscience that permeates throughout the piece though it is interesting when their target becomes the access point through which to take down a bigger fish. The reality is that the bigger the fish the more protections are in place. The layer of screens here is what creates the context of the rabbit hole though this life we see every day in certain ways on our compiuter sometimes doesn't quite capture the essence of cinema. It actually becomes much more visceral when watched on a laptop because it becomes another screen within a screen. What "Lifehack" does tend to do is show the disconnect in many ways more than a reconnect though the participants do get some facetime in other ways. "Lifehack" as a progression points in many ways to an essence of existential crisis in a world where every idea of who we are is front facing. B
By Tim Wassberg
