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Building on the success of the 2021 film collection Tech Tales: Films about Digital Rights in the Asia-Pacific, Tech Tales Youth aims to support young filmmakers and visual storytellers in the Philippines and Thailand to produce short films about human rights in the digital age. Tech Tales Youth brings young filmmakers’ creative voices into the digital rights movement, broadening their knowledge of how human rights and digital rights are intertwined and how they can utilise filmmaking for impact and advocacy.
The films from the Philippines cover stories on digital labour, new money and platform accountability, access to the internet and digital technologies by marginalised groups, and disinformation contributing to historical revisionism. The impact of doxxing on women, the importance of data privacy, and accountability of the state and private companies are portrayed in the films from Thailand.
The short films comprising Tech Tales Youth, conceptualised and directed by ‘Digital Natives’, contribute to the alternative cinema of Thailand and the Philippines. The collection creatively employs various storytelling genres such as narrative fiction, documentary, and animation to raise awareness and advocate for digital rights.
This Tech Tales edition emphasises mentorship and peer and community support through meetings facilitated by impact production resource persons and through learning sessions. The film collection will contribute to growing the digital rights movement not only by bringing in new allies and audiences to the space but also by creating more digital rights films that the movement can leverage for its advocacy efforts.
Follow Tech Tales Youth on Instagram: @techtales.engagemedia
Tech Tales Youth Film Collection
Suspecting that cybercriminals have illegally accessed the personal data of millions of Thai citizens, filmmaker Min launches a daring investigation to expose how criminals wreak havoc in the digital realm.
Two Aeta indigenous students navigate modern education through digital technology and the internet amid the struggle to maintain their traditional way of life.
After her personal information was published online and a barrage of harmful messages targeted at her, a journalist must survive the threat of someone out to destroy her life.
Julia, a young woman lost in her city, witnesses the rise and fall of various versions of her home. As the lines blur between truth and fabrication, she must navigate the fragmented pieces of her existence to find a sense of belonging and understand the truth about her home.
A mysterious mutilated arm emerges from a black hole, forcing a young man to confront the sins of his military officer father, who had sold other people’s private data for personal gain.
Separated by poverty, Nanay Linda’s long-lost sister makes a return with a fateful phone call. She must then contend with survival, motherly instincts, conflicting emotions, and the trappings of the digital age all in one ordinary morning.
Three delivery riders in Metro Manila record a day in their lives, revealing their challenges as digital app-based workers ‘gamified’ by delivery companies. As the day ends, the riders take a breather and talk about a range of topics – including how to counter tech-driven exploitation.
