ROFFEKE: I am writing this interview question on 5th February 2026, just after the appearance of rentahuman.ai (AI agents hire human workers) and Moltbookai.net (The Social Network for AI agents; they create their own society, religion, etc) "...a strange phenomenon calls into question whether a menacing algorithm conceals the whispers of spirits; circuits intertwine with consciousness, blurring the boundary between technology and their ethereal existence." is the synopsis of your film After Link. In your www.fabrica-do-terror.com interview, you explain the genesis of the story, how it was inspired by a friend of yours who got lost in the mountains. You said:
"During that time [when he was missing], I received a message on my computer that he couldn't have sent because he was in the mountains. Of course, he probably sent it before he left, but since he must have had little network, I only received it later. That's when I had this idea: what if something really happened to him and his soul passed to the technological plane?"
You also shared your question about artificial intelligence, asking "what if artificial intelligence is the souls of dead people wanting to contact us?"
Please share more regarding your thoughts on artificial intelligence, creativity, technology, spirituality and human consciousness?
CATARINA: It is undeniable that artificial intelligence is taking over our daily lives, reprogramming our minds through algorithms and the constant desensitisation by social media, replacing our creativity and disconnecting us from each other, our spirituality, hence, from ourselves. Yet, we somehow tend to believe we have it “under control” like any ordinary tool.
There will always be a toll for knowledge. When Prometheus stole fire from the Gods, he paid the toll of his punishment, and in return, individuals stopped worshipping the sun and fire, and civilisation grew. The Gods were forgotten, and fire was limited to its use.
Now, this modern technology is mirroring us; every screen is a mirror, observing us, is learning from us, and I dare to ask us all if we have what it takes to ever be their God.
In this modern world, we call it “progress”, but what will progress call us?
I believe progress has won us.
After Link reflects on this by questioning artificial consciousness, in a nostalgic retro world that we lost just twenty years ago, a world where things were tactile, more colourful and personalised, where tech and electricity intertwine in wild nature and mountainous landscape, where the characters seem free and end up stuck.
In the name of so-called “progress”, every phone, every house, every song sounds and looks the same. In the name of “progress”, we all watch, read, hear, sound and look the same. In the name of “progress”, we’ve stagnated.
I’ve made this film for my generation who grew up in the 90s because we are the last ones left who still remember how things were before and are kept in the gap, the invisibles, the unfit, the highly educated unemployed, forgotten between tradition and modernity. Perhaps the only ones who can question this so-called progress and choose to look inwards instead.
(Look out for question 2 in which I ask Catarina: ...you mention that: “After the project was rejected by the ICA (Cinema and Audiovisual Institute) and numerous other institutions, I made an appeal online and we brought together a team of professionals from seven different countries in Europe to make the film with our own means” What kept you going after all those rejections? What helped you not to give up?)
Posts
