You Can’t Automate Me

Encounters of tattooed port workers, poetic movement and stowaway animals in the vast automated expanse of the Rotterdam harbour. Before containerships leave the harbour to carry goods and brave the waves, lashers fasten containers using heavy long metal bars. Surrounded by self-driven vehicles and remotely operated cranes, they are among the last who do dangerous physical work in harbours across the globe.

The film has its eye set on these lashers. During the night shifts, while they wait to enter another ship, their bodies rest and start to speak. In dreamy sequences, they explore their environment through skin, ears, muscles, and bones. Stowaway animals appear from the containers as visions of a more natural world. With the support of IFFR RTM Award, Mondriaan Fund and V2_ Lab for Unstable Media.