Guadagnino's Artificial Turns OpenAI Into Drama

Luca Guadagnino has made a film about the people who built OpenAI. Artificial had its world premiere on Oct. 5 at the New York Film Festival, a late addition to the lineup, with Andrew Garfield playing Sam Altman. Critics are split on how well it works, and the Oscar conversation has already begun.

What it is

Artificial is a 140-minute, PG-13 drama from Neon, written by Simon Rich and directed by Guadagnino, according to Variety's review. The film opens in Toronto in 2003, where a 17-year-old Ilya Sutskever, played by Yura Borisov, impresses the computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, played by Mark Rylance. From there it follows the rise of modern AI research, the sale of their work to Google and the founding of OpenAI.

Variety's Owen Gleiberman calls it a docudrama about the creation of artificial intelligence and a true sequel to The Social Network, a comparison he makes against Aaron Sorkin's own follow-up, The Social Reckoning. The supporting cast includes Cooper Hoffman as Greg Brockman, Monica Barbaro as Mira Murati, Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk, Jason Schwartzman, Chris O'Dowd, Zosia Mamet, Cooper Koch and Billie Lourd. The score is by Damon Albarn of Blur.

What critics say

Gleiberman's review is a rave. He praises Garfield for playing Altman as a corporate seducer who wins over the audience, and he calls Borisov's work possibly the performance of the year. He also describes the film as part tech docudrama, part horror story, and says its central argument is that the speed needed to win in business pushes against the caution that Sutskever urges.

Not every critic agrees. The Guardian's headline calls the film a muddled tech satire, and we have not read that review in full. The range of reaction matters here, because Artificial depicts real, living people and real events. Gleiberman calls it meticulously true to history, which is his view of the film and not something we could verify. Viewers should treat dialogue and scenes as dramatization.

The awards picture

Gold Derby wrote on Oct. 9 that Guadagnino and Garfield used Alice Tully Hall to launch the Oscar campaign for the film, which Neon picked up after Amazon MGM passed on it. The same site had Garfield fifth for Best Supporting Actor at 59.3 percent, and the film at No. 13 for Best Picture, the closest of the festival's newcomers to the top 10.

The pairing has history. A year earlier, Guadagnino and Garfield opened the 2025 New York Film Festival with After the Hunt, which Gold Derby describes as a last-ditch effort to rescue a faltering Amazon MGM campaign. These are projections from an awards site, not nominations. The season is long, and the film has not yet been seen by most voters or the public.

Why it lands in New York

Few subjects are as present in American conversation as artificial intelligence, and Variety frames the film as a reaction to a moment when AI is advancing without clear government oversight, an opinion the review states in its closing paragraphs. The film reaches an audience that works in, writes about or worries about the technology, and it arrives at a festival whose audience often sets the tone for the awards season. Gold Derby reports the reaction in the room was euphoric, though one festival crowd is not a verdict.

About the director

Guadagnino is known for Call Me by Your Name, Challengers and After the Hunt. The cover photograph on this story was taken at the 2025 New York Film Festival, when he introduced After the Hunt, not at the premiere of Artificial. We were unable to find a Wikimedia Commons photograph of Guadagnino from this year's premiere at a resolution that meets our standard.

What we could not confirm

We have not seen Artificial. Neither source we read gives a theatrical release date, and we could not confirm one. Details of the story come from a single full-length review. The depiction of named individuals, including Altman, Sutskever, Hinton, Musk, Brockman and Murati, has not been checked against their own accounts, and we have not seen responses from them.

FAQ

When does Artificial open?

We could not confirm a release date. Neon is the distributor.

Who stars in it?

Andrew Garfield plays Sam Altman and Yura Borisov plays Ilya Sutskever, with Mark Rylance, Cooper Hoffman, Monica Barbaro and Ike Barinholtz among the cast.

Is it based on a true story?

Variety describes it as a docudrama about the founders of OpenAI. It is a dramatization, and scenes and dialogue are the filmmakers' interpretation.

Sources

*Cover photo: Bryan Berlin, Wikimedia Commons, *[*https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Luca_Guadagnino_After_The_Hunt-49.jpg*](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Luca_Guadagnino_After_The_Hunt-49.jpg)* (CC BY-SA 4.0).*