Director: Simón Casal
A judge is asked to sign off on the machine that might replace her, and the request turns out to be the most dangerous case of her career.
What is Artificial Justice about?
Carmen Costa has built a career on careful judgment, so when the government invites her to evaluate a new AI system meant to run the courts without human bias, she treats it as due diligence rather than ceremony. Portugal and Spain co-produced this near-future thriller, which follows Costa as her review moves from procedural to personal: the engineer who built the software is found dead before she can finish her assessment, and the timing is too convenient to file away. She starts pulling at the seams of the project's funding and oversight, and each thread leads back toward officials who have far more riding on the software's approval than a tidier docket. Verónica Echegui plays Costa with a controlled, watchful intensity, while Alberto Ammann and Tamar Novas fill out a cast of allies and adversaries whose loyalties are never quite settled. Director Simón Casal keeps the setting recognizable rather than futuristic-for-its-own-sake, using courtroom procedure and institutional bureaucracy as the actual battleground. The tension isn't whether AI can judge fairly in the abstract; it's whether the people who built and sold this particular system can survive Costa asking the wrong question at the wrong hearing.
Cast & crew
Verónica Echegui anchors the film as Costa, playing restraint rather than heroics, which suits a story built on paperwork and quiet threats rather than action beats. Alberto Ammann and Tamar Novas round out the ensemble as figures whose motives shift as the investigation widens.
Context & significance
Artificial Justice arrived in 2024 as part of a wave of Spanish-language and Iberian genre films using near-future premises to examine present-day institutions, pairing a legal thriller's pacing with speculative-fiction stakes about automation and accountability.
Where & how to watch
Artificial Justice is available to stream on K-Time with a free account login. The site's interface and recommendations are built around Farsi-speaking audiences, so browsing, searching, and title pages read naturally in Persian even when the film itself is in its original language.