Science at Sundance

INSIGHTS Downloaded from http://science.sciencemag.org/ BOOKS et al. FILM FESTIVAL there, it gained unauthorized access to the personal information of 87 million networked profiles. The company used this information Science at Sundance to collect voter data on behalf of Ted Cruz’s on March 21, 2019 and Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns, An entrepreneur’s ambitious health care start-up ends in indictment. A teenager with the goal of influencing the 2016 election in Malawi saves his village with a brilliant feat of engineering. A community through devious targeted advertising. A com- works around the clock to save a tiny porpoise inching ever closer to extinction. bination of investigative journalism, lawsuits, From a Holocaust survivor’s candid sex advice to a Cambridge Analytica insider’s and whistleblowers broke the story, leading in 2018 to Cambridge Analytica’s demise and shocking congressional testimony, the science and technology stories told at this Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s stone- year’s Sundance Film Festival were as riveting as they were timely. The festival, walling testimony before the U.S. Congress. held in January and February in the snowy ski town of Park City, Utah, is now in its The Great Hack follows Parsons School of 34th year. The 2019 theme—“Risk Independence”—emphasized the organization’s Design professor David Carroll, who sued Cambridge Analytica to find out what infor- commitment to provocative themes and experimental storytelling. “Art can’t spark mation the company had about him. Car- conversation if it’s playing it safe,” summarized the Sundance Institute’s executive roll serves as a champion of individual data director, Keri Putnam. Read on to see what our reviewers thought of 10 featured protection, appearing thoughtful and deter- fi lms sure to spark conversation in scientifi c circles. —Valerie Thompson mined. Followed at much greater length is Brittany Kaiser, Cambridge Analytica busi- ness director turned whistleblower. A prob- lem for the film is that Kaiser comes across Great Hack, Karim Amer and Jehane Nou- as unlikable—her motivation opaque and The Great Hack jaim’s documentary about the Facebook– her politics opportunistic. As the pressure Reviewed by Robert S. Krauss1 Cambridge Analytica scandal. on her mounts, however, details emerge Cambridge Analytica, the British political that humanize some of her choices and sug- Under what circumstances should your consulting firm founded by American far- gest that she is more sympathetic than she personal information on social media be right players Robert Mercer and Stephen first appears. shared, and who should be the gatekeeper? Bannon, started its quest to gain access to The Great Hack is complex and suspense- These are among the most important ques- personal data with an online survey taken ful. It also has some terrific CGI animation. tions facing society and are the focus of The by 300,000 consenting Facebook users. From The film screened at Sundance was too long D’ALESSANDRO GABY ILLUSTRATION: 1270 22 MARCH 2019 • VOL 363 ISSUE 6433 sciencemag.org SCIENCE Published by AAAS Downloaded from http://science.sciencemag.org/ at well over 2 hours and would benefit from relentless promotion of the company led to editing before its appearance on Netflix. a video trail that the film capitalizes on, of- The Elephant Queen The issues it explores will not have been fering viewers a chronicle of her mendacity. Reviewed by Michael D. Shapiro2 solved by then. It is remarkable to watch the evolution and on March 21, 2019 increasing brazenness of her lies. In the visually stunning documentary The The Great Hack, Karim Amer, Jehane Noujaim, The Inventor makes good use of inter- Elephant Queen, a violent thunderstorm directors, Netfl ix, 2019, 139 minutes. views with journalists who were taken in by brings renewed life to a watering hole in Holmes, as well as Wall Street Journal re- what narrator Chiwetel Ejiofor refers to as porter John Carreyrou, who first broke the “the Kingdom” region of Kenya’s Tsavo Na- story of her deception. Much-deserved screen tional Park. The area is home to an elephant The Inventor time is also given to two young Theranos em- herd led by 50-year-old matriarch Athena, Reviewed by Robert S. Krauss1 ployees who went public with their doubts at one of the last of the massive tuskers. When great personal risk. Tyler Shultz (grandson of drought seizes the Kingdom and the wa- “I don’t have many secrets,” says Elizabeth Theranos board member George Shultz) and tering hole dries up, most animals flee or Holmes at the outset of The Inventor, which Erika Cheung faced down Theranos’s legal burrow underground. However, Athena tells the story of the rise and fall of her com- team, led by the formidable David Boies, and must choose whether to embark on a peril- pany, Theranos. In 2003 at the age of 19, helped unravel the fraud. ous trek to another refuge or delay migra- Holmes set out to transform the health care The film makes the case that Holmes tion to allow a weakened family member to industry, promising a technology that could was a true believer, unable to admit, even recover. The Elephant Queen appeared in conduct a large number of tests by using to herself, that she had lied. Although this the Sundance Kids program, but the film small blood samples derived from a finger- rings true, it’s hard to imagine that at some unflinchingly confronts the herd’s struggle stick. But, contrary to her claim, Holmes had point during the crumbling of her fantasy for life and the devastation triggered by the an immense secret: Despite raising Theranos world she did not grasp reality. Slightly over- arid savannah. to a $9 billion valuation, the technological long at 2 hours, The Inventor still awaits a Interwoven with the story of Athena’s ability to achieve her ambition never existed. coda: Holmes has been indicted on federal family are fascinating vignettes about the Directed by Alex Gibney, The Inventor charges of defrauding investors, doctors, and biology of other animals that live at “toe- tells this now well-known story, emphasiz- patients. She faces up to 20 years in prison. nail level” to the elephants. Dung beetles ing Holmes’s embrace of a “fake it till you battle for the elephant-processed remains of make it” ethos and her ability to get power- The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, the Kingdom’s plant life and inspire some ful, but nonmedical, establishment figures Alex Gibney, director, Jigsaw Productions, whimsical fight scenes. Meanwhile, seeds to believe in her unquestioningly. Holmes’s 2018, 119 minutes. lodged in other dung piles germinate and SCIENCE sciencemag.org 22 MARCH 2019 • VOL 363 ISSUE 6433 1271 Published by AAAS Led by a charismatic matriarch, an elephant Downloaded from family embarks on a harrowing journey in The Elephant Queen. produce food for turtles; everything is in- confrontations with police are mentally ill. tal illness. Bedlam makes clear that change http://science.sciencemag.org/ terconnected. The Elephant Queen is not The causes explored in the film range from is long overdue for a nation neglecting its explicitly a conservation film, but it con- the shuttering of asylums beginning in the most vulnerable citizens. veys an unmistakable message that all spe- 1950s (which led to an order of magnitude cies thrive in collaboration, and disruption fewer inpatient beds) to the Reagan admin- Bedlam, Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, director, of this balance could have catastrophic ef- istration’s defunding of community health Upper East Films, 2019, 84 minutes. fects on local ecosystems. efforts to underfunding of brain research The Elephant Queen feels unique among and a failure on the part of the pharmaceu- nature documentaries for its extraordi- tical industry to develop better therapeu- nary, intimate footage of Athena’s family tics. We can debate the primacy of these Sea of Shadows 3 and impossibly close-up shots of smaller causes, but the misery and chaos generated Reviewed by Paul L. Koch on March 21, 2019 animals on the move. Cinematographer in their wake are undeniable. Mark Deeble, who codirected with Victo- Bedlam is most powerful in its depiction The vaquita, a tiny porpoise of Disneyesque ria Stone, captured some of the film’s most of the suffering of people left adrift by our cuteness, is hurtling toward extinction; spectacular scenes from an underground system of care. We meet them at their sick- fewer than 15 individuals remain in Mexi- box, creating rare perspectives at and be- est, in the Los Angeles County–University of co’s Sea of Cortez. Sea of Shadows, a new low eye level of the animals. Together, Southern California psychiatric emergency documentary by director Richard Ladkani Stone and Deeble craft a richly textured room, then follow their lives for several (The Ivory Game), hammers home how insider’s view of elephant family dynam- years. Their outcomes vary in relation to greed drives this catastrophe. ics—and the activity that surrounds it— the social networks that support them. The The Chinese mafia and Mexican drug car- that is infused with personality, emotion, film also tells the story of Rosenberg’s sis- tels make millions shipping the swim blad- and empathy. ter Merle, who suffered from schizophrenia. ders of the endangered totoaba fish to Asia, Her illness motivated him to become a psy- where they are valued for their purported The Elephant Queen, Victoria Stone, Mark Dee- chiatrist and a filmmaker. medicinal properties. Local fishermen, in- ble, directors, Apple, 2018, 96 minutes. Shame is a powerful part of Bedlam’s creasingly impoverished by restrictions story. It prevents some families from seek- made to save marine life in the Sea of Cor- ing the help they need.

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