DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
Vienna, October 2024
I have spent the last 5 years working on a documentary film about the fight against fake news and disinformation. I accompanied investigative journalists from the New York Times and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists as well as computer scientists from UCLA and UC Berkeley who have built software that can autonomously detect conspiracy theories online. They are working closely with neuroscientists from UCLA, whose research with epilepsy patients has revealed a lot about how information is processed in the brain at the level of individual neurones.
HOW TO BUILD A TRUTH ENGINE took me on a journey from the information battlefields of our time into the innermost recesses of our brains, during which two things became increasingly clear:
First, those who can hack our information feed, can hack our mind.
Second, if we lose our grip of the truth, we will lose our civilisation.
Friedrich Moser
producer | director | d.o.p.
HOW TO BUILD A TRUTH ENGINE
LOGLINE
A documentary about how our biological hard-wired neurological behaviour makes us so susceptible to misinformation, and what we can do about it.
HOW TO BUILD A TRUTH ENGINE
documentary feature | Austria, 2024 | 124min
written & directed by
Friedrich Moser
executive produced by
George Clooney
Grant Heslov
cinematography
Friedrich Moser
editing
Gernot Grassl
Anna Kirst
original score
Thomas Kathriner
Christoph Stock
sound design & Dolby Atmos re-recording mix
Michael Ploederl
colorist
Jacob Jabornig
Lee Niederkofler
featuring
Peter Cochrane
Susan Benesch
Zahra Aghajan
Vwani Roychowdhury
Tim Tangherlini
Itzhak Fried
Malachy Browne
Haley Willis
Christoph Koettl
Michael Nikbakhsh
Fergus Shiel
Pavan Holur
Andrew Zolli
Muyi Xiao
produced by
Friedrich Moser
Robert Rippberger
Amina Bayou
Ivan Williams
executive produced by
Tonmoy Monsoor
Patrick Lechner
Jamie Coughlin Silverman
Gabriel Silverman
Natalie Marciano
Rock Jacobs
Matthew Spain
co-executive produced by
David Jay Lasky
Batia Parnass
a
Friedrich Moser Film GmbH
production
with support from
Austrian Film Institute
FISA
ORF Film-/Television Agreement
in association with
SIE Films
The Front Corner
SideXSide Studios
Rebel Entertainment
distribution
Friedrich Moser Film GmbH