I'm Not a Robot (22:29)
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Caution: spoilers.

This Dutch (with English subtitles) short film came out in 2023, and won the 2025 Oscar for best live-action short film. I really wasn't sure where to put my review. Sci-fi was a possibility, but it felt more like a drama, to me. However, it's described on some sites as a dark comedy, and I can kind of see that. Still feels more like drama to me, but I didn't want to put my review there, and neglect the comedy aspect. Ultimately I went with "weird/surreal", which I'm still not entirely comfortable with, but it was my least uncomfortable option.

It begins with a music producer named Lara listening to a cover of Radiohead's "Creep". Suddenly the song stops, and her computer asks her to log into her account to continue. When she fails a series of CAPTCHA tests, she calls customer service, and the representative suggests she might actually be a robot. Then she takes an online test, which says there's an 87% chance that she's a robot. She calls her boyfriend, Daniel, and when she says she might be a bot, he pretends the wi-fi is cutting out, and hangs up. A bit later, Daniel comes to see her, accompanied by a woman named Pam, and they try to reassure her... that being a bot is okay. (Pam is ostensibly a representative of the company that sold Lara to Dnaiel.) Lara is understandably quite perturbed by this, and doesn't want to believe it. And she continues getting more upset as she talks to Daniel about it.

I don't want to go into any more details of the plot. But I will say I couldn't help but wonder if she really was a robot, or maybe she was human after all, and Daniel and Pam were either playing a joke on her, or seriously trying to gaslight her. I won't say how it ends, but I will say I found the ending sort of ambiguous, even if it's not meant to be. And I'm not sure how I feel about that. At first I was thinking that it bothered me that I didn't get a definitive answer about Lara, but when I considered that the answer might actually be definitive, I'm not sure I liked knowing the truth, either. But still, it's a very well made and well acted short film, with an intriguing and rather disturbing premise. The actress does an amazing job of portraying Lara's ever-increasing unease and finally desperation. I think the film is objectively better than the rating I've given it, but as much as I appreciated it subjectively, I still couldn't manage to like it quite as much as it deserves. Probably that's entirely due to my uncertainty about the ending, but even that was objectively pretty good (though disturbing). Anyway, I'm glad I watched it.