We gave up our privacy to fight Covid-19, can we get it back?
JAMES GRAHAM’S PEOPLE YOU MAY KNOW
A NEW SHORT FILM BY FINANCIAL TIMES AND SONIA FRIEDMAN PRODUCTIONS
SUPPORTED BY LUMINATE
James Graham’s new short film People You May Know on the growing influence of big data and algorithms on our day-to-day lives, starring Lydia West and Arthur Darvill, is released today via ft.com/drama and the FT’s YouTube channel.
“Future schoolchildren, studying the great pandemic of 2020, are going to be able to draw their own map of person to person contact.
We have it all, it’s all stored: every human interaction, every footstep, every message.”
Directed by the FT’s Juliet Riddell, People You May Know investigates how the response to COVID-19 has accelerated the intrusion of the data state into people’s private and emotional lives and what it might mean for our future. It revolves around the interrogation of a junior barrister, played by Lydia West (star of the recent Channel 4 drama It’s A Sin), by Arthur Darvill (Doctor Who and Broadchurch), a data analyst from a private software firm, about her behaviour during lockdown, as monitored by her internet-connected devices.
As part of the research for the film, James Graham, along with representatives of Sonia Friedman Productions, met a group of leading Financial Times tech journalists and experts to discuss the role of data and the reach of algorithms in society today.
“The data knows best, and that’s why we must hand ourselves over to it.”
FT Assistant Editor Janine Gibson said: “Our goal for FT Film is to continue to innovate and develop compelling stories. In collaborating with the arts world, journalists can learn new ways of communicating the real-world impact behind the facts we uncover. The results, as shown by this film, can be truly powerful.”
Sonia Friedman said: “Drama, like journalism, exists to ask important questions of the contemporary world and one of those questions is our relationship to data. The advantages of our information age have rarely been as overt as in this extraordinary year, but as James Graham’s potent and unsettling theatrical short film People You May Know makes clear, they are not without disconcerting and complicated trade-offs. James is a writer with the keenest of moral compasses, and his astute dramatic eye – along with pinpoint performances by Lydia West and Arthur Darvill – brings a flush of feeling to the Financial Times’ rigorous journalistic enquiry.”
Martin Tisné, Managing Director, Luminate, said: “The collective nature of data means people are more impacted by other people’s data than by data about them. As the film perfectly demonstrates: the energy readings on my thermostat, the video feed from my door bell, even my satnav routes – these impact all of us. In the era of machine learning, individual denial of consent is close to meaningless. The Covid pandemic has accelerated this datafication. Our societies urgently need collective as well as individual data rights to chart a new course for the digital future we want to see.”
James Graham’s theatre work includes Bubble (Nottingham Playhouse), Sketching (Wilton’s Music Hall), The Culture (Hull Tuck), Quiz (Chichester Festival Theatre, Noël Coward Theatre), Labour of Love (Noël Coward Theatre – Olivier Award for Best Comedy), This House (National Theatre – Olivier Award nomination for Best New Play, and Garrick Theatre – Olivier Award nomination for Best Revival), Monster Raving Loony (Theatre Royal Plymouth and Soho Theatre), The Vote (Donmar Warehouse, broadcast live on More4 on election night and nominated for Best Live Event at the BAFTA TV awards), The Angry Brigade (Theatre Royal Plymouth and Paines Plough), the Broadway musical Finding Neverland, written with Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy, Privacy (Donmar Warehouse), The Man (Finborough Theatre and on tour), The Whisky Taster (Bush Theatre) and Tory Boyz (Soho Theatre). As Writer in Residence at the Finborough Theatre his plays include Albert’s Boy, Eden’s Empire and Sons of York. His television writing includes political drama Brexit: The Uncivil War (Channel 4), The Crown (Netflix), Coalition (Channel 4), Prisoner’s Wives (BBC1) and Caught in a Trap (ITV1). His ITV drama, Quiz – adapted from his play of the same name, about the “coughing major” Who Wants to be a Millionaire scandal was one of the highest rated dramas broadcast last year. His first feature film X+Y was released in 2015 after being selected at the Toronto International Film Festival and London Film Festival, winner of the Writer’s Guild Award for Best Debut Screenplay.
Standpoint is an FT Film series in which FT journalists, creative artists and experts collaborate to explore the stories of our time and communicate subjects in a different form. Previous FT films have focused on climate change, COVID-19, Brexit, homelessness and antibiotic resistance, with partners including the Royal Court Theatre, Sadlers Wells, Nicola Walker, Stephen Rea and Yo-Yo Ma.
Duration: 18 minutes