Are we all living in the Matrix? Behind a documentary on simulation theory

In A Glitch in the Matrix, film-maker Rodney Ascher speaks to people who are convinced that the world we're living in isn't real

Rodney Ascher's new documentary A Glitch in the Matrix opens, as so many nonfiction films do, with an interview subject getting settled in their camera set-up. In this instance, a guy named Paul Gude is Skyping in from a setting familiar to anyone who's spent the last year trapped in video-chats. He's sitting in what appears to be a bedroom made to double as an office, the fisheyed webcam lens catching some dirty laundry, a shelf full of books and decorative toys, some homemade-looking art on the walls. But the eye is instantly drawn to Gude himself, a hyperreal computer-generated creature with shiny copper skin, warrior armor, a scar stretching from his forehead to his cheek, and a mane of shifting polygons in jewel-tone ruby red making his head look like a 20-sided die. He could be a distant cousin of Lion-O from the Thundercats, and he's here to tell us that everything we know may be a lie.

Related: A Glitch in the Matrix review - deep-dive into simulation theory