Marc Isaacs’ new film *Synthetic Sincerity* is a “curious, intriguing, semi-sincere affair” that the reviewer found “unsatisfying and insubstantial.” The film is a “self-aware docudrama hybrid” in which Isaacs pretends to license characters from his previous documentaries to a fictional AI research lab called Synthetic Sincerity at the fictional University of Southern England, so the lab’s software can be trained in creating AI human figures. The lab’s research staff are played by actors, including Lebanese independent film-maker Lynn El Safah. Isaacs has scripted conversations with a disapproving AI avatar whose face is digitally modelled on Romanian actor Ilinca Manolache. The film does not show the process by which Manolache was approached. The supposed point is to create an AI version of an exiled Uyghur man called Ablikim Rahman, who runs a restaurant in London, so the AI figure can say therapeutic things the real person couldn’t. El Safah gets into made-up trouble with her made-up university employer for speaking to a Uyghur person when the university is dependent on Chinese money, as well as for her anti-Israel views. *Synthetic Sincerity* is in UK and Irish cinemas from 17 July.