It is nearly impossible not to stumble upon something upsetting on various social media platforms. Apologies for accidental blunders are more common now that companies have generally abandoned moderation as a pillar. With that in consideration, what is the more upsetting scenario? Is it that a person will see a violent or pornographic image or video that will forever be burned into their psyche? Or is it that there are people in the world who will have an endless buffet of this content to feed on as they seek it out? Uta Briesewitz’s “American Sweatshop” is honed into those who are underpaid and undervalued stewards of consent moderation. These hired guns don’t have a choice in the matter of whether to look away at a disturbing image or a disgusting video. It’s an “I Love Lucy” conveyor belt from hell mucked up in a bureaucratic system with numbers and quotas.
Daisy (Lili Reinhart) hopes to become a nurse eventually, but her days are confined to a computer screen. She looks through all sorts of offensive content for a social media company inside a sterile room where many people like her do the same thing. The job is simple – if it’s offensive, you hit delete. If it’s borderline, you pass it through. But ahh, even a video of a man killing a rabbit has to be looked upon with nuance, according to head manager Joy (Christiane Paul). If the man is eating the animal, a culinary aspect might make it a pass. It’s an insane amount of gymnastics for people to have to go through while having to process depictions of murder or mutilation. But at least Daisy is not alone. She has her office friend Ava (Daniela Melchor), the loose cannon Bob (Joel Fry), who might spontaneously combust with rage, and a South Korean graduate student named Paul (Jeremy Ang Jones). Together, they go through the monotonous loop of deleting or passing.
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One day, Daisy comes across an upsetting (maybe) fetish video titled “Nail in Her,” which pushes her mental state to the brink. She has nightmares about the video, and those unsettling images creep into all facets of her life. Once “American Sweatshop” introduces this element, it takes off to the point of being pulled into two different directions. In not committing to one definitive statement, the film ultimately stumbles in trying to say everything at once. Briesewitz and writer Matthew Nemeth make good on caring about the well-being of the individual characters within this vicious ecosystem. You see and hear their observations and thought processes as their brains are thrown into a daily meat grinder. “American Sweatshop” cedes the most time to Daisy’s character beyond the grounds of the workspace. It also peers into Paul’s dilemma of needing a job to stay in the country. At times, the film makes little inferences into the corporate structure of these moderation places — which should be for the greater good of all parties involved. Yet, forgoes any altruistic sense of duty because removing too many things could suffocate “free expression.”
Those themes would have been enough to consider, but the film makes a confusing decision regarding Daisy. It sends her on a vigilante mission to find the video makers, placing her in dangerous situations, hoping that Daisy could change a couple of minds. When we witness an injustice, we are naturally inclined to right that wrong. But it’s unclear what purpose Daisy serves as an avatar for. “American Sweatshop” undercuts its own tension by having a dispute about what this specific video serves. Is it purely a sexually explicit home video, or is someone on the receiving end of a horrible act?
The story walks down the middle of the line and settles on the internet being the bad place. I think we can all agree on that assessment. Does each of us take to the streets and police these instances at the source, or is the answer much more complex and uncomfortable to manage? “American Sweatshop” settles for murky generalities rather than making its point loud and clear.
American Sweatshop premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival.
