The Love Files and All the Downtime Receive Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant 2026
All the Downtime – Ant Hampton
In his new work, Ant Hampton focuses on systems of an entirely different scale, yet here too the focus remains on the people subjected to them – potentially all of us in the end. All the Downtime begins as a guided tour through a highly automated distribution centre, where human workers are tracked, monitored and optimised by systems that are slowly but surely replacing them.
When the power suddenly goes out, these systems also experience 'downtime' – ironically precisely the interruption the workers dream of. As the visitors seize their chance and occupy the robotic space, the dark logic behind the system is slowly unravelled: the enormous energy demand, the gigantic physical infrastructure, the endless mountains of goods and even the architecture of the distribution centre, which is now deployed to detain people.
Just like in his work Borderline Visible (which won a Special Jury Award for Creative Technology at IDFA DocLab in 2023), in this immersive work by Ant Hampton you are handed a photobook. As you flip through it, you are accompanied by a soundtrack featuring a narrator, ambient sound and instructions. In this way, you yourself are the connecting factor that brings together the 'audio' and 'visual' parts of the experience.
The photos in the book are AI creations this time, however, depicting what is usually kept out of sight by the industry. They show automated distribution and data centres pushed to the extreme (including for AI itself), where people are gradually replaced by machines, or increasingly start to think and act like machines: anticipating, taking over, collecting.
When an irregularity in such a warehouse causes the power to fail, however, a twilight zone emerges in which the mechanical, all-predicting algorithms are powerless. Suddenly, these spaces without windows or daylight are disrupted by playfulness, humanity and sensuality.
As the system slowly falls apart, something decidedly human breaks through. Play, desire, chaos and disorder take over from prediction and control. What begins as a temporary interruption grows into something much more radical.
"Ant Hampton turns something as everyday as reading into a shared, political experience. In a time when AI increasingly gives us the feeling that we have no grip on developments, turning the pages together brings something unexpected and human back into a system entirely revolving around control." – Michiel van Opstal, film consultant at the Netherlands Film Fund
"All the Downtime manages to transform a deep sense of discomfort into something that prompts action. As you are guided through the system yourself, you gain increasing insight into how it works. Initial frustration and distrust thus slowly make way for the need to intervene and bring back the human." – Nina van Doren, programmer at IDFA DocLab
Experience these works from 13 to 22 November during IDFA DocLab at Flemish Cultural Centre de Brakke Grond. The full selection of IDFA DocLab will be announced in October.
About the Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant
For almost ten years, the Netherlands Film Fund and IDFA DocLab have been working together to support immersive and interactive projects and offer them an international stage. Previous recipients of the grant include Alaa Minawi, Lisa Schamlé, Studio Moniker, Mathilde Renault, Jeroen van Loon and Dries Depoorter. Following their premiere at IDFA DocLab, projects previously supported with this grant gained international recognition at renowned festivals such as SXSW, Sundance, CPH:Dox and Sheffield DocFest, and many others.
Main image: All the Downtime