Klaus Stern’s film tries to approach Alex Karp, the founder of the global data analysis company Palantir. A sadly current and enlightening documentary masterpiece of film.
Alex Karp studied law at Stanford and received his doctorate in social sciences and philosophy in Frankfurt am Main in 2002 with magna cum laude. In 2003, he founded Palantir Technologies together with his college friend Peter Thiel and others as investors. For example, the US secret service used the data analysis software developed by Palantir for anti-terror analysis, and in North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse, too, among other places, the “Gotham” software was used by the police for a while. But just as puzzling are the business figures and machinations of this company that went public in 2020 as its boss Alex Karp himself, whom cameraman Thomas Giefer has known personally since the 1990s. Yet attempts to get this man in front of the camera for a current film portrait seem doomed to failure again and again.
With a journey into the past does Klaus Stern’s film begin. We see Alex Karp strolling through New York as a young man in the 1990s, posing for Thomas Giefer’s camera staging himself. But already another cut shows: The world of Alex Karp is different now. What has remained is the enigmatic aura around this taciturn man. In his documentary WATCHING YOU – THE WORLD OF PALANTIR AND ALEX KARP does Klaus Stern repeatedly try to get “title hero” in front of camera personally but he keeps slipping away from it: He thus becomes a symbol of his own company about which puzzled entire (business) world. How could Palantir become so successful? Which processes, entanglements and scandals is involved corporation? Is software “Gotham” used to kill by drone command? And who actually controls those who develop all this? So his film about this giant corporation behind the scenes and interviews, among other things whistleblower who no longer works for Palantir. In talks with this “whistleblower” shows how devouring such a large corporation can be. Inner circle people become part of “family”.
They enjoy every conceivable privilege. But after leaving they must forever remain silent about what they have learned in the company. And so WATCHING YOU opens up interesting but also shocking and disturbing truths at several levels: Control mania of large corporations towards their employees, which takes on cultic traits – and ubiquitous, octopus-like presence of big tech companies in all our lives. Data is tapped, users are monitored. And critical questioning is prevented by transparent surveillance that many have succumbed to already – until it’s maybe too late. Michael Kadelbach’s electronic bass-heavy score fits the permanently threatening atmosphere in relevance given current world-situation cannot be surpassed by film.
For More Movies Visit Putlocker.