German director and cinematographer Ute Briesewitz lives in the US and has mostly directed TV until now (“In Treatment,“ “Jane the Virgin,“ “Severance,“ “Stranger Things“ among others). AMERICAN SWEATSHOP, her first feature film, is set in the world of social media moderators who check content that users have flagged day after day. Is it a satire, news, art, or pornography and violence? Keep or delete? The images, which the film itself doesn’t show, by the way, haunt the employees when they leave their austere office cubicles, and almost everyone has broken down at some point. Daisy Moriarty (Lili Reinhardt) hasn’t been working there for long when she stumbles upon a porn video one day in which a man is violent towards a woman. She is convinced that this is a real crime but no one at the office does anything. The boss sends her to the office psychologist and the police don’t feel responsible for it. So Daisy begins to investigate. AMERICAN SWEATSHOP is somewhere between a thriller, social commentary, and a psychological drama. Some elements seem to be almost satirical, but they’re probably well researched – like the calm room being a dingy corner of an open plan office, separated by a glitter curtain, and a time out that can last up to exactly nine minutes. The film is almost more interested in the team’s break room conversations than in Daisy’s amateur research; these conversations often take place by the murky artificial pond behind the office complex, from which a crocodile occasionally emerges. What sounds like an interesting idea on paper doesn’t fully come together as a film. You can tell the production had a small budget and some of the actors aren’t able to provide the depth required to hold the loose construct together.

Toni Ohms

Translation: Elinor Lewy