The Trouble With Being Born review: Unsettling science fiction drama raises questions about artificial intelligence

A degree of controversy — and the spectre of artistic censorship — has overshadowed this audacious, shapeshifting science fiction feature from Austrian director Sandra Wollner, which was pulled from this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival amid concerns over its depiction of the relationship between a middle-aged man and the child android he calls his daughter.

At the prompt of The Age, two forensic psychologists specialising in child sex offences — one who watched only part of the film, the other none at all — suggested the implied sexual nature of the relationship might constitute exploitation of the lead child actor, and that the film was at risk of normalising paedophilia, claims that Wollner emphatically denied.