The Job

As long as i can remember i have always been a fan of short films. For example when i visited Film Fest Sundsvall 2020 ( a film festival in the city of Sundsvall in Sweden ) i got to see Swedish short films of director´s i have never heard of. What´s exciting about this is that you get to see film makers telling many different stories, and introduce actors who you have not seen before as well. Since this film festival was supposed to be in March in that year because of the pandemic it was moved to September and they still managed to pull this off following certain rules. At this film festival i decided to watch the Swedish short film Var Är Vargen? ( Where Is The Wolf? ) from director Jonathan Norberg. This turned out to be a very interesting short film telling the story of a grandmother Gunilla ( really well acted by actress Riitta Nilsson ) spending time with her granddaughter Sofia ( Lowa Jonsson ). You get a sense that Gunilla may have some problems with her memory and seem kind of lost at times, could she have dementia? One day she decides to leave Sofia at her house watching the dog, so she can go to a graveyard and bring flowers to a specifc grave. When she drives back she suddenly hit something with her car. It looks like she hit her granddaughter Sofia with her car. Completely devastated not knowing what to do, she have to figure out what she should do from here. Var Är Vargen? ( Where Is The Wolf? ) is a very well directed short film by director Jonathan Norberg and what i especially enjoyed about this short film is that you have to figure out yourself what is true or not regarding the granddaughter. Did she really die or did something else happen during this time period? This short film was actually filmed not that far away from where i live here in the north of  Sweden so that made this short film fascinating, capturing the beautiful nature around these areas. You can watch this short film on Vimeo if you want to check it out. Not that long ago i was asked by a respected film producer in America if i could review a short film called The Job. Of course i never turn down when someone ask me to review something special, and to be honest i have not seen a lot of short films since last year ( mostly full feature films ). Is this a short film you should take the time to watch or is The Job not as good as i was hoping it would be?

While going for a job interview, Todd ( LeJon ) is dealing with a lot of personal struggles in his life. As he arrives to the location where the job interview will be held, he discover that this is no ordinary job interview.

Since i didn´t know anything about the plot of The Job before i watched it, that made everything a little bit more exciting not knowing any details. This is basically a short film that tries to show us how AI can make us aware of our own fragility. How would you react if you find out that AI pretty much know everything about your life, and tries to tell you what you should do during a job interview using a completely unrealted method than we are used to see? Very different concept than i have seen before for a short film story and this is definetely a science fiction story that should let the viewer ask several questions. Should we accept that AI know this many details about our privacy? Should we allow AI to operate job interviews instead of a living human being? There are a couple of other questions that came to my mind while watching this fascinating short film, but let´s get into the characters for a bit. Actor LeJon playing the character known as Todd is a man who clearly struggling from trauma dealing with a lot of pain, while he really needs to get a job. I feel that LeJon manage to capture the personality of Todd in a realistic way, how someone in his life situation might react. The AI bot Athena 42.0 is played by actress Dawna Lee Helsing ( who i have seen in several full feature films and short films, i did review her short film Down And Out In Vampire Hills in this blog ) is a fascinating character. Dawna manage to portrait this AI bot character that makes it feel like this is not a human being talking, this feels like a bot but almost seems programmed to know exactly what to say. I feel that the screen chemistry between LeJon and Dawna Lee Helsing works well and you get a sense that this is how a futuristic job interview could look like. Director Craig Railsback have made a good looking short film with The Job and bring some interesting subjects worth discussing. If you love intelligent told science fiction stories, this should definetely be a short film you would be interested in.

Rating: DDD