A near-future noir dressed up as a domestic drama, Wifelike asks what happens when a grieving man's closest companion isn't entirely who she seems to be. The 2022 science-fiction thriller pairs Elena Kampouris with Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
What is Wifelike about?
In a near-future world where artificial humans are bought, sold, and traded like property, a grieving detective works cases that put him in direct contact with the black market for synthetic people, chasing down those who profit from exploiting them. His personal life complicates that mission: he has been assigned an artificial companion designed to behave like his late wife, meant to ease his grief rather than deepen it. An underground resistance movement, determined to disrupt the trade from the inside, sets out to sabotage that companion's programming, and the detective's carefully constructed home life starts to come apart at the seams. As fragments of a life that isn't hers begin surfacing in her memory, the companion is left questioning what she actually is in a world built to make that question impossible to answer cleanly.
About the cast
Elena Kampouris and Jonathan Rhys Meyers lead the film, joined by Doron Bell, Agam Darshi, Sara Sampaio, Alix Villaret, Fletcher Donovan, and C.J. Perry. Director James Bird builds the film's tension around the two leads' opposing arcs, one investigating a criminal underworld and the other slowly uncovering who, or what, she really is.
Context & significance
Wifelike arrived in 2022 within a wave of near-future science-fiction thrillers examining artificial companionship, memory, and identity, themes that have become a durable strand of the genre as synthetic-human stories move from pure spectacle toward more personal, psychological territory. Its American production keeps the setting grounded and contemporary despite the speculative premise, favoring intimate character drama over large-scale world-building.
Watching Wifelike on Ktime
Wifelike streams on K-Time with Persian dub and Persian subtitles available, giving viewers the choice of the original English performances or a Farsi-language version of the film. Only a free K-Time account login is needed to start watching, and the film's page can be browsed without signing in first. K-Time's Farsi-first platform makes discovering science-fiction and thriller titles like this one straightforward for Persian-speaking audiences.