Steven Ascher’s ‘Looking Forward’ is an essay film, but that label barely scratches the surface. It’s a lucid dream of history and possibility, a cinematic séance where the past and future collapse into eerie, AI-generated black-and-white imagery. The effect is haunting, hypnotic, and intimate.
Ascher’s voice-over guides us through, steady and unrushed, like someone telling a story they’ve carried for years. He speaks of uncertainty, of the fears that follow us like dark shadows – both personal and global. AI-generated visuals, often dismissed as lifeless, take on an uncanny emotional weight here. History morphs before our eyes, sometimes vast and collective, other times deeply personal – like when Ascher reflects on his family’s Ukrainian roots, stitching together generational memory and the digital reimagining’s before us. The result is something more profound, more than an experiment. It feels like a reckoning.
‘Looking Forward’ lands because of the emotion humming underneath. At it’s core, it’s not really about technology or time – it’s about what it means to be human in the middle of it all. The film balances on the edge of optimism and dread, never really surrendering to either. At the end the film shifts. Color bursts through. Motion takes over. We are flung back into the present. This is where we are now. This is what matters.
After all the ghosts, all the imagined futures, we land back in the present – where life is immediate and very real. It’s a breathtaking conclusion, one that reminds us that no matter how much we look back or forward, now is all we ever truly have. The combination of impeccable sound design, editing, and a thoughtfully structured narrative makes this a piece of filmmaking that deserves your attention.
