Selected for AFI'25 by Project 88, Mumbai, India.
Content Moderator playfully draws attention to an ongoing invisible and traumatic labour being undertaken by thousands of people around the world on behalf of the world's most powerful technology companies. The work raises important questions about who the content moderators sacrifice is for - who benefits from their looking at and removing the brutal, violent and strange imagery that is posted on social media. Is it a sacrifice by a precarious working class for us—the general public—or for the richest men in the world? Is it safety or censorship?
Marte Hodne Haugen’s film presents the traumas and horror that social media content moderators live with, considering what is hidden from the gaze of the public, by workers who watch everything that is posted.
Martyrs or guardians, these precarious workers externalise their emotional response and moral decision making to a set of rules for what should be deleted, dictated by the platforms they work for. The music video satirically considers the class politics and mechanisms of power inherent to the moderators decisions. The moderators watch and hide from us what we would prefer not to see, therefore keeping audience engagement high, all the while the platforms themselves are watching everything that we do and monetising it.
Tromsø Kunstforening has valued its participation in Artists’ Film International for over a decade and continues to appreciate the focus and space it gives to experimental artists’ moving-image. The 2026 theme’s focus on the power of looking and the image feels particularly relevant to both the future of moving-image art and to our collective future in a swiftly changing and highly saturated media landscape, where a sharp criticality towards the image is essential.
Ruth Alexander Aitken, Curator and Producer, Tromsø Kunstforening / Romssa Dáiddasiida / Tromssan Taitopiiri
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