This week we’re excited to present an archival conversation with The Human Surge director Eduardo Williams. Eduardo Williams’s latest film,The Human Surge 3, will make its U.S. Premiere as the Opening Night selection in the Currents section of the 61st New York Film Festival.

A twenty-something in Argentina loses his warehouse job. Boys in Mozambique perform half-hearted sex acts in front of a webcam. A woman in the Philippines assembles electronics in a small factory. The Human Surge, a Projections selection of NYFF54, features Eduardo Williams’s inquisitive camera in constant motion in, as are his rootless characters, who wander aimlessly, make small talk, futz with their phones, and search for a working Internet connection. Unfolding within the unfree time between casual jobs, this wildly original rumination on labor and leisure in the global digital economy seems to take place in both the immediate present and the far horizon of the foreseeable future.

This conversation was moderated by NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim.