A Drama Rooted in People, Not Algorithms

Read Time:5 Minute, 34 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Humans in the Loop
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Genre: Drama
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 14m
Director(s): Aranya Sahay
Writer(s): Aranya Sahay
Cast: Sonal Madhushankar, Ridhima Singh, Geeta Guha, Anurag Lugun, Monika, Aranya Sahay
Where to Watch: available now on Netflix

RAVING REVIEW: There’s something refreshingly direct about HUMANS IN THE LOOP. It doesn’t wrap its ideas in spectacle, and it doesn’t try to overwhelm you with the scale of its commentary. Instead, it begins with a grounded, lived-in world and slowly reveals how the smallest, quietest decisions can shape the forces that will one day affect millions. The story’s power stems from its personal nature, even as it tackles a topic that is often reduced to headlines, buzzwords, and apocalyptic think pieces. Here, the human cost of artificial intelligence isn’t theoretical — it’s a daily routine, a mother’s job, and a community’s key to survival.

At the center is Nehma, played with unforced sincerity by Sonal Madhushankar. She carries the film with a presence that never calls attention to itself. She isn’t written as a mouthpiece for the film’s broader argument. She’s simply a woman trying to rebuild her life, keep her family afloat, and navigate a new role that places her between her beliefs and the demands of a global industry that rarely sees the people behind its datasets. That clarity is what lifts the film’s thematic weight. Nothing feels delivered as a lecture; everything feels like a lived conflict.

The most engaging aspect involves the connection she forms with the idea that AI is “like a child,” a common refrain that has circulated in her workplace. For many characters, it’s an empty metaphor. For her, it becomes a compass. The film resists the urge to over-explain this dynamic. Instead, it allows Nehma’s gestures, hesitations, and moments of quiet contemplation to communicate more than any speech could. Her worldview treats life — in all its forms — with a certain reverence, which shapes how she approaches even the most mundane tasks. It’s subtle character work, but it resonates.

At its strongest, HUMANS IN THE LOOP gives a voice to a group often erased from conversations about technological progress. Data has become the hidden backbone of how machine-learning systems evolve, yet the labor is almost always invisible. Instead of portraying it as mere clicking and sorting, it becomes a space where human judgment, history, and belief intersect with corporate expectations that carry their own inherent biases. The conflict that emerges isn’t explosive, but it’s revealing—a clash between a woman’s understanding of the natural world and a system designed to categorize it through someone else’s values.

The film’s emotional throughline is strong, even when the structure occasionally wanders. The mother-daughter arc is essential, and the film succeeds when it allows that relationship to mirror the AI storyline. However, there are moments where the tension between them feels more subtly hinted at than fully developed. It’s not a flaw big enough to interrupt the film’s overall impact, but it’s an area where a bit more time could have strengthened the payoff.

The cinematography captures Jharkhand with a mixture of realism and warmth — not beautified, not gritty, but lived-in. The contrast between rural life and the sterile atmosphere of the AI center is striking yet understated. There’s a sense that both places are incomplete in their own ways, and Nehma is caught between them, trying to define what a future looks like for herself and her children. The film employs framing, sound, and pacing to highlight the disconnection between modern technology and the people who sustain it.

Another standout element is the thematic restraint. Many films dealing with AI lean into fear, spectacle, or dystopia. HUMANS IN THE LOOP chooses a more grounded angle: not “robots replacing humans,” but “humans shaping a system that may or may not understand them.” That distinction is crucial. It turns the film into a question rather than a warning. What happens when technology takes on the limitations, assumptions, and blind spots of the people who train it — especially when those people are marginalized, underpaid, or overruled?

What elevates the overall experience is its grounding in real research and practical applications. The film is drawn from the lives of indigenous women who actually do this work, and that authenticity shows. Nothing is exaggerated for dramatic effect. Nothing is simplified to make the point louder. Instead, the film respects its subject, and that sincerity becomes its greatest asset. Viewers accustomed to the tech world being portrayed through Silicon Valley or sci-fi tropes will find this perspective refreshingly human.

Emotionally rich, culturally significant, and ambitious in its themes, even if some narrative threads could have benefited from a bit more breathing room. What stays with you afterward isn’t a grand thesis about AI. It’s the quieter truth that technology doesn’t begin as neutral, and the people shaping it deserve to be seen. HUMANS IN THE LOOP succeeds by focusing on the person behind the algorithm, not the algorithm itself. And that’s where its impact lies — not in big ideas alone, but in the lives that illuminate them.

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[photo courtesy of NETFLIX, ONE RISING, SAUV FILMS, STORICULTURE]

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