From community screenings to Netflix, Humans in the Loop keeps conversations on AI, labour, and Western biases going

CHENNAI: There is something wholesome about a film travelling to people the old-fashioned way before landing on a global platform. Humans in the Loop has done just that. After the festival circuit, months of community screenings across India, and a limited yet packed theatrical release in many cities recently, the Jharkhand-set indie that explores the invisible labour behind technology and who gets to shape the future, began streaming on Netflix on October 31. The film is also gearing for a limited US theatrical release and impact campaign this week.

At the heart of the story is Nehma (played by Sonal Madhushankar), an Adivasi Oraon woman who takes up work as an AI annotator at a data-labelling centre in Jharkhand to secure custody of her children after a divorce. In one striking scene, she explains to her manager why she chose not to label a worm as a pest. Refusing to be Captcha-coded by binary labels, she stands her ground despite her manager’s reprimand, who faces pressure from superiors in the West. Drawing from her native knowledge, Nehma explains that the little creature eats the rotting parts, which helps sustain the ecosystem. “AI ek bacche ki tarah hai, Madam, usko galat sikhayenge toh galat seekh jaayega (AI is like a child, Madam; if we teach it bad things, it will learn bad things),” she says, even as her superior dismisses her, asking her not to act smart and to do as instructed.

This tension between lived indigenous wisdom and imposed systems, viewing generative AI as a new form of Western hegemony, and raising urgent questions of representation, forms the crux of Humans in the Loop. At a time when both the perils and possibilities of such simulation abound, the film makes for an urgent and necessary viewing. At the same time, it is deeply hopeful, and that is the note the film leaves one with. Nehma’s relationship with her daughter, teaching her to see the world, its people, and nature, and nurturing their bond through moments of strain, mirrors her training of the AI ‘bachha’ to see the world through her eyes, those of an Adivasi woman in Jharkhand.

“The idea for Humans in the Loop came from observing how women from marginalised backgrounds are working as data annotators across India,” says director Aranya Sahay, an FTII alumnus whose mother’s work as a sociologist inspired him, speaking to DT Next at one of the screenings in Chennai. “In Jharkhand, Telangana, Rajasthan, even Tamil Nadu, they sift through thousands of images and videos, tagging objects like chairs or tables so that algorithms can learn to distinguish between them.” Backed by Goa-based Storiculture’s Impact Fellowship, Humans in the Loop was inspired by journalist Karishma Mehrotra’s article ‘Human Touch’ for Fifty Two, and developed through Aranya’s own research and field visits.

Challenges and support in making the film

Making Humans in the Loop wasn’t easy. “Jharkhand lacks film infrastructure—no line producers that would serve our kind of film. So we had to do a lot of that work on our own. We had to scout for locations and even find child actors ourselves,” Aranya recalls. Distribution was another battle. “Even after premiering at the Mumbai Film Festival, there are no guarantees. Often, a film dies in the first few months after its festival premiere. Festivals are sporadic; they’ll happen once in 2-3 months. What do you do in between that?

“But we realised at MAMI that if 300 people came, 100 were writing personal essays about the film. That kind of engagement and conversion ratio meant we had to keep showing it in India. And thanks to the kind of socialist model the country had, we have institutions like the National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC) that let travelling filmmakers show their film without paying a penny. We too showed our film at places like the NFDC, Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute (SRFTI), the National Film Archive, and the India International Centre.”

Industry support charted a turning point for the film. With well-known filmmaker Kiran Rao and National Award-winning tribal documentary filmmaker Biju Toppo joining the team as executive producers, the film’s reach expanded. “Kiran Rao’s record of backing certain cinema and the kind of films Biju Toppo has made in Jharkhand gave us courage to keep going,” Aranya says. "Not only because of their background in distribution but also their expertise on how to champion it correctly, who to champion it for, who is your target audience, etc, did a world of good for us."

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Conversations that travel with the film

Since its premieres at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival and International Film Festival of Kerala last year, Humans in the Loop has travelled far and wide, gathering new interpretations and resonances along the way. For the film’s co-producer Mathivanan Rajendran (BAFTA Breakthrough honoree and founder of Chennai’s Stray Factory), travelling with Humans in the Loop has reaffirmed the importance of reconnecting cinema with its audience. “Over time, the connection between the film and the audience feels like it has gone very far away,” he says. “Now, when filmmakers are present and engage directly with communities, it sparks real conversations about urgent issues."

Aranya recalls how Sholay filmmaker Ramesh Sippy shared that he had forgotten what it felt like to be moved in a theatre until watching Humans in the Loop. “And a tech expert told us that the way we placed humanity before technology was essential to the global AI conversation,” he says.

What the film wants to spark

Humans in the Loop asks who gets to design technology and feed it data. “AI systems, or all of the technological systems that are designed, are designed by countries that are not necessarily from the Global South. One part of the world is designing these systems, but the other part is having to consume them—systems not even tailored to our needs,” says Aranya, who adds that the film is an attempt to have an Indian perspective on AI.

For Mathivanan, the film is also about shifting accountability. “We often blame technology itself, from how addictive our phones are to how surveillance grows unchecked. But really, it’s about the designers and businesses behind it: they hold immense power. I’d love to see a world where those who design such systems can make more ethical decisions about them. Like in that scene where Nehma says, “No, this (worm) is not a pest"—such small acts of resistance can create new possibilities. Everyone working in tech can have that voice,” he believes. 

A new model for purpose-driven cinema

Speaking about Storiculture’s accelerator programme which supported Humans in the Loop, Aranya explains that it is designed to break the usual bottlenecks in film funding. “Usually, you either go to traditional funders and make the kind of films they want, or to international festivals, tailoring your work to Western aesthetics,” Aranya explains. “This programme uses CSR and philanthropic funds to support purpose-driven cinema without that compromise. It’s the only space I’ve found that does this.”

Mathivanan frames it as a bridge between creators and funders: “We want to unlock a new kind of creative energy where creators can fulfil their full potential while funders meet their goals. Purpose-driven films that entertain and create social impact, like Spotlight or Dark Waters. That’s where we hope to take the accelerator… it will benefit both individuals and society, I believe.”

(Humans in the Loop is directed by Aranya Sahay and co-produced by Mathivanan Rajendran, Sarabhi Ravichandran, Shilpa Kumar, and Aranya through Storiculture’s Impact Fellowship, Museum of Imagined Futures and Sauv Films. The philanthropy-backed film was supported by Omidyar Network India. Now streaming on Netflix.)

Awards and honours

1. Being considered for the Sloan Distribution Grant, awarded to science-based films by Film Independent and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. (Past recipient: Oppenheimer)

2. Winner of the FIPRESCI Award for Best Feature Film (International Critics Guild Award), 2025, shared with All We Imagine As Light

3. Winner of the Grand Jury Award for Best Feature Film at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA ’25)