Making Waves: Dismissed

Weaponizing the faux-documentary format with surgical precision, Dismissed is a low-key yet deeply unsettling conspiracy thriller built entirely on talking heads—a cold, calculated parade of faces offering carefully manicured lies. The micro budget constraints transform into style: the drama is in the writing and the constant drip-feed of revelations. A freelance journalist investigates a fatal server room fire at tech giant Futura AI after the case is quickly and suspiciously shut down. Dispensing with costly reconstructions, the film relies solely on the methodical accumulation of testimony to expose the rot. The relentless structure—the journalist’s skeptical face juxtaposed against utterly unreliable sources—slowly turns the dead victim from “exemplary employee” to an inconvenient religious outlier. A timely, chilling study in corporate erasure, this indie debut makes themes of workplace toxicity and AI ethics feel immediate, plausible, and terrifyingly real.