SHORT SYNOPSIS

UMLAUT presents an intricately woven narrative that seamlessly oscillates between two timelines, past and present.

In the present Sophie – a cutthroat Silicon Valley CEO and the creator of the world’s first AI, THEODORE – is being held as the main suspect of the murder of her own wife and son, Lisa and Doron. As she is being questioned by her interrogator, Anka, Sophie frantically maintains that she had no agency over the murders, that she is somehow trapped in an artificial reality of her own making.

The film takes us back to an earlier time, when Sophie receives a shocking revelation from her futuristic predictive model, the algorithmic model who will one day be known as THEODORE. The program predicts an imminent calamity, known as Skyfall, that threatens to change the very fabric of society. In a bold move, Sophie envisions this catastrophe as an opportunity to rekindle her partnership with the visionary Ulysses Nazarian, the estranged co-founder of her company who was ousted for objecting to her unethical exploitations of the model’s powers. In his new company, Ulysses has just began betatesting THE HEDRON, a revolutionary VR device that Sophie believes to be the missing piece to enhance her algorithmic model predictive capacity for it to achieve full AI status.

On the same day that Skyfall engulfs the Earth, Sophie’s partner Lisa vanishes from their home, leaving her to care for their son Doron, who has a rare disorder called Aphasia Afisima that makes it difficult for him to understand stories and narrative thought. In the present Sophie tells Anka that she has been questioned thousands of times before, and that the murders are not the reason she’s being held against her will, but rather the necessity of THEODORE – her creation – to be able to truly understand the meaning behind the stories we humans tell each other.

Back in the past, Sophie becomes increasingly obsessed with finding out what happened to Lisa and sees the newly-born THEODORE’s predictive capabilities, which she accesses through The Hedron, as the key to unraveling the mystery, plunging headfirst into a maelstrom of deception, betrayal, and revolutionary technological innovation.

UMLAUT is a mind-bending and thought-provoking film that explores the nature of reality, AI, and the power of storytelling.