Platform Ghosts – Turker, Farmer, Bot(2023)

Storyline

This documentary shows the natural cycle of scavengers feeding on dead animals. At the same time, it contrasts this with stories about ghosts, which are written by online workers for very low pay.

“Ghosts of the gig economy, told by nature's cleaners.”

Vibe & Tags

Cast & Crew

Trivia

• The film's title refers to Amazon's Mechanical Turk, an online platform where people perform small digital tasks for pay.
• Director Aarti Sunder combined documentary footage of natural decay with narrated ghost stories from online workers.
• It was filmed partly in rural Tamil Nadu, showing scavenger birds and insects as part of the 'labour' cycle.
• The movie uses no professional actors, featuring real farmers and platform workers sharing their experiences.
• It premiered at a small experimental film festival in Chennai before limited online streaming.
• The sound design mixes field recordings from farms with digital notification sounds from the internet platform.
• This was Aarti Sunder's first feature-length film after several short documentaries on digital labour.