Les Explorateurs is not an AI film. It is a film about artificial intelligence.

It offers a necessary look at the present and at a future that is already unfolding. Refusing to look directly at the images and technologies that now flood our lives — believing that by ignoring them they are not happening — is to actively participate in the destruction of what we call cinema.

Today, more than ever, it is necessary to confront images. To look this beast in the eye — artificial intelligence — with the mixture of wonder and fear we associate with the first audiences watching the Lumière brothers’ train.

This film does not offer definitive answers. It is a starting point. The beginning of a conversation that can no longer be postponed if we want to understand the future that lies ahead — and the place cinema will occupy within it.