Who Was Here? – Films – Visions du Réel

Evi Stamou
Greece | 2025 | 25 min
World premiere
Language : English
Subtitles : French

To fill in the gaps and inconsistencies in her father’s biography, filmmaker Evi Stamou begins a correspondence with an artificial intelligence. From this conspiratorial and often impertinent exchange, possible and probable stories emerge, painting the portrait of a young dreamer, at a time when the Greek military junta was gaining power.

In documentary cinema, the “family photo” film has become a genre in its own right. Everyone sets out on their own investigation, following the threads of the past to unearth long-buried secrets. Who was here? could easily resemble one of those stories we've seen a hundred times. But while Evi Stamou turns to the past, she does so armed with the tools of the present. To paint a portrait of her father, she spends months feeding and training an artificial intelligence program — supplying it with interviews, archives, and personal testimonies. Only then does she begin to ask her questions. The film’s narration unfolds through a probing and sometimes wry dialogue between the filmmaker and the AI’s generated responses. Gradually, the film sheds light on what might have happened to her father during his military service, a period he refuses to discuss, offering only the curt refrain: “I don’t remember much.” A brilliant and bold undertaking that explores memory, transmission, and trauma, while also questioning the very nature of truth in the age of AI, the idea of immortality in the era of social media, and the evolving role of machines in the creative process!

Anne Delseth

Who Was Here?, 2025
Etudes, 2022
Circular Identity, 2022
There is no one online, 2017-2020
Memory Lane, 2017
Motion/Transition, 2013