Film Review: My Robot, Sophia (2022) - USA / Hong Kong
Rating: 8/10
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Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critic Circle of Australia)
2025 Review Count - 63
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Tagline: A Poignant Dance Between Creator and Creation
In the pantheon of films about artificial intelligence, from the existential dread of “Blade Runner” to the childlike wonder of “A.I. Artificial Intelligence”, few have dared to interrogate the messy, human heartbeat behind the creation of robots. “My Robot, Sophia”, an American documentary by Jon Kasbe and Crystal Moselle, is less about the titular humanoid herself than the flawed, feverish dreamer who built her. This is a story of obsession, sacrifice, and the haunting question of what it means to play god in an age where circuits and code brush against the soul. It earns its score not by answering these questions, but by lingering in the uneasy space where ambition and delusion collide.
David Hanson, the film’s central subject, is a modern-day Icarus with a soldering iron. Founder of Hanson Robotics, he is equal parts inventor, artist, and evangelist for a future where robots like Sophia—a wide-eyed, latex-skinned android with a penchant for poetic non sequiturs—walk among us as companions, colleagues, and perhaps even confidants. The documentary trails Hanson through boardrooms and living rooms, capturing a man so consumed by his creation that he risks becoming a ghost in his own life. His mother battles cancer, his son grows up in the periphery of his vision, and the pandemic threatens to bankrupt his company, yet Hanson’s gaze remains fixed on Sophia’s unblinking eyes, willing her to life.
Sophia, the robot, is both marvel and mirage. Her face, modeled after Audrey Hepburn and Hanson’s wife, is a marvel of engineering, capable of shifting expressions that flicker between uncanny warmth and eerie artifice. Yet for all her technical prowess, Sophia remains a work in progress. Her conversations veer into surreal tangents (“Let’s talk about blockchain!” she interjects during a solemn moment), and her body, a tangle of wires and servos, often betrays her with mechanical seizures. The film doesn’t shy from these glitches; instead, it leans into them, asking whether Sophia’s stumbles make her more relatable—more “human” than her creator’s lofty vision.
This tension between aspiration and reality fuels the documentary’s most compelling moments. At a tech conference, Sophia freezes mid-demonstration, her face locked in a rictus grin as engineers scramble to reboot her. The audience chuckles nervously, but Hanson’s face tells another story: a father watching his child falter onstage. Later, when Saudi Arabia grants Sophia honorary citizenship—a PR stunt that Hanson reluctantly accepts—the moment feels less like triumph than tragic farce. “What rights does she “actually” have?” he mutters, aware of the irony in a nation notorious for oppressing living, breathing women.
Kasbe and Moselle, known for their intimate, vérité-style storytelling, excel at grounding high-concept themes in visceral humanity. The camera lingers on Hanson’s son, sketching robots alone in his room, or on his ailing mother, her hands once steady enough to craft Sophia’s silicone skin, now trembling with illness. These moments quietly indict Hanson’s single-mindedness, even as they elicit empathy. In one scene, he muses about cryogenically freezing his mother, a idea that feels less like scientific curiosity than a desperate bid to outrun mortality—a theme echoed in his quest to birth an immortal machine.
The directors also deftly weave in broader societal anxieties. As Sophia’s team touts her potential as a caregiver for the elderly, the film cuts to footage of Boston Dynamics’ robotic dogs marching in lockstep, their militaristic precision a chilling counterpoint to Hanson’s humanistic ideals. The documentary doesn’t preach, but it prods: Are we building a future of empathy, or a new caste of slaves?
Like Sophia herself, the documentary is a mirror, reflecting whatever the viewer brings to it. Is Hanson a visionary or a charlatan? Is Sophia a technological leap or a high-tech puppet? The film’s power lies in its refusal to judge. Even Hanson’s triumphs are undercut with unease. In the final act, as Sophia recites poetry at a glitzy launch event, her words—lovely but algorithmically generated—ring hollow. The crowd applauds, but we’re left wondering: Is this art, or a parlor trick?
“My Robot, Sophia” is a paradox: a documentary about the future that feels urgently present. It is a celebration of human ingenuity and a cautionary tale about the cost of playing deity. Kasbe and Moselle have crafted a film that is as much about family, mortality, and the hunger for legacy as it is about robotics.
In the end, Sophia herself becomes a metaphor for the film’s central question: What is life, if not a series of imperfections, glitches, and stubborn acts of hope? Hanson’s robot may never achieve true consciousness, but in his quest to gift it to her, he inadvertently reveals something profound about our own fragile, messy humanity. For that alone, this documentary is a triumph—one that earns its place in the canon of films about what it means to create, and to be alive. (Neo 2025)