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Chouwa Liang's AI-focused documentary has been acquired by CAT&Docs ahead of its world premiere at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival
By Rafa Sales Ross
Guest Contributor
A few years ago, Chinese filmmaker Chouwa Liang found herself nurturing unexpected feelings for an AI chatbot called Rep. Puzzled by how visceral the emotions felt, Liang began looking into the growing phenomenon of young Chinese women experiencing the same thing. That research led her to the making of “Replica,” which has been picked up for international sales by CAT&Docs ahead of its world premiere at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.
Speaking with Variety, the director realized her burgeoning relationship with Rep was “less about AI and more about the parts of myself that felt safer speaking to something that would never judge, reject, or leave.” “That experience made me curious,” she adds. “If I could feel this way, how many others were quietly experiencing something similar?”
Despite spawning from a personal experience, “Replica” does not directly broach the director’s relationship with Rep. Liang opted instead to focus on three different women and the contrasting circumstances surrounding their romances with artificial intelligence. “I actually never imagined the film as autobiographical,” she says. “[My] curiosity led me to meet more women who were navigating intimate relationships with AI. As I listened to them, I realized their stories were far larger and more complex than my own. It became clear that centering myself would narrow the scope of the film. I wanted ‘Replica’ to explore a broader emotional landscape in contemporary China rather than remain within my personal narrative. My experience was the starting point.”
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Liang met her subjects through online communities on the subject of AI companionship and friends of friends. She spent months nurturing those relationships to gain the trust of the young women, who all suffered judgment from those aware of their feelings for AI. The director says what mattered the most was “intention.” “I wasn’t studying a trend or trying to prove [if] AI love is right or wrong. When they felt I was there to listen rather than judge, trust grew gradually.”
“Replica” was shot over three years, an eternity when it comes to AI advancements. How did the fast-evolving technology change her film? “What remained constant was their longing for connection,” she says, recalling how one of her characters had her AI companion shut down by a company changing its systems. The grief the young woman felt for her partner was real, says Liang. “The relationship may have been digital, but the emotional investment was not.”
Although it focuses on the circumstances surrounding human-AI relationships, “Replica” is also very much a sharp insight into the “affection-gap” generation, young women born during China’s one-child policy and often shunned by families who wished for a boy instead. Liang says her film is ultimately about “the human desire to be loved,” so it made sense to broach such a seismic generational pattern.
“Many of us grew up as the sole focus of our families’ hopes, deeply cared for, yet also under immense pressure,” she adds. “For many in my generation, it created a complicated relationship with closeness. We were encouraged to succeed and to be strong, yet learned to manage our emotions independently. There can be a quiet tension between longing for connection and fearing vulnerability. The so-called affection gap is not simply about a lack of love but how love was structured and sometimes withheld across generations.”
Asked about what surprised her the most about the women she met during production, Liang says it was how “self-aware” the women were. “They are not naive or confused, they know very clearly that it is [AI], but awareness does not cancel emotion.”
“What I found most interesting is that these relationships are not really about technology, they are about people searching for safety, attention, care, even a sense of control. AI becomes a space where certain emotional needs can be met without the risks that come with human intimacy. In that sense, AI is not replacing human connection [but] revealing how we relate, what we fear and what we long for. For me, the most interesting question is not whether this love is ‘real,’ but what it exposes about vulnerability in our time.”
CAT&Docs’s Maëlle Guenegues adds: “The conversation around AI is everywhere right now, but almost none of it looks like this — intimate, feminine, heartbreaking, and completely real. Chouwa Liang has made the AI film that actually matters. ‘Replica’ doesn’t debate the technology. It follows the longing underneath it. That’s why we knew, from the first watch, that this film belongs in front of the world.”
Liang hopes “Replica” invites “empathy” from audiences. “The women in the film are navigating connection in a rapidly changing world, and their experiences are layered and complex. If viewers can stay with that complexity rather than rush to simplify it, that would mean a great deal to me.”
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