Andrew Garfield has stepped into the role of Sam Altman in Artificial, Luca Guadagnino’s new film about the rise of OpenAI, which made its international premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on Sunday night. The film screened at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall on 11 October, with Guadagnino returning to the festival after previously bringing films including Queer and After the Hunt to London. Written by Simon Rich, Artificial focuses on the development of OpenAI and the turbulent period that saw Altman removed as CEO before being reinstated days later.

Garfield leads the cast as Altman, with Yura Borisov, Monica Barbaro, Cooper Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, Chris O’Dowd, Ike Barinholtz and Mark Rylance also starring. Rather than approaching the story solely as a tech drama, the film looks at the people involved and the ethical questions surrounding the creation and rapid growth of artificial intelligence.

The BFI has described Garfield’s performance as one of his strongest, with the film placing the human drama around Altman and OpenAI at the centre of the story. Guadagnino directs the 140-minute feature, which is screening as part of the festival’s Gala strand and is presented courtesy of NEON.

There are still two opportunities to catch Artificial at this year’s festival, with further screenings taking place at Vue West End on Thursday 15 October at 3:30pm and Royal Festival Hall on Friday 16 October at 11:30am.

For CultureCues, this was one of the London Film Festival premieres we were really looking forward to, and we were there for Sunday night’s screening at the Royal Festival Hall. Andrew Garfield playing Sam Altman was enough to put this high on our list, and having Luca Guadagnino behind it only made us want to see it more. We’ll have our full review of Artificial on CultureCues soon.

Artificial made its international premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on Sunday 11 October, with further festival screenings taking place on 15 and 16 October.

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