Meridian follows the last unit in a fleet of autonomous machines sent to deliver an emergency vaccine. Through a robot’s agnostic eye, the film looks at how human dramas are inscribed onto the inanimate, searching for possible parallels between automation and purgatory, depression and malfunction. The film is inspired by a real event that occurred in Washington, D.C. on 17 July 2017, where an automated security robot from the company Knightscope was found floating in a fountain at the building it patrolled. It had plunged into the water while on a routine patrol, spurring speculation about whether the machine had chosen to end its life or if this was just a glitch in an otherwise reliable new technology. Perhaps more interesting than the fate of the machine was the desire to see its death within a human context.
Meridian (2019) is now streaming with subscription on Prime Video
Calum Walter
