What Do We Do Without The Algorithm
Updated: 2 days ago
By Julie Sisk | October 1, 2026
I am mid-Fall Festival Frenzy.
Venice, Telluride and TIFF are behind us. We’re mid-New York Film Festival and heading toward the BFI London Film Festival.
There has been a massive amount of overlap. For festival junkies, that almost makes the films that don’t overlap more interesting.
Every festival this fall seems to have its handful of must-see films: Wild Horse Nine, Elsinore, Musk, Tender Loving Care, Bunker and others that appeared over and over again on festival schedules.
But what about all the rest?
What about the films that courageous and occasionally slightly crazy festival programmers saw, loved and decided deserved an audience?
At home, we rarely encounter films that way anymore. Netflix, Amazon, Apple and the rest know what we’ve watched. They know what we stopped watching. They know our search history. And they are very happy to suggest something else we will probably like.
Or they put the ten most popular films and shows right in front of us.
And, like sheep (myself very much included) we watch.
But what happens when there is no algorithm?
At a film festival, someone has thoughtfully made a choice. A programmer has watched hundreds of films and said: This one. You should see this one.
You may know nothing about it. There is no movie star. No famous director. No rave review. Maybe not even a particularly compelling description in the program.
You take a chance.
Sometimes you walk out.
Sometimes you wonder what on earth the programmer was thinking.
And every once in a while, you discover something extraordinary.
I think that may be one of the reasons real film aficionados still travel across oceans, stand in lines, scramble for tickets and spend days sitting in dark theaters.
Of course, we want to see the new film everyone is talking about.
But we're also looking for the one no one is talking about.
Yet.
And that, really, is at the heart of why we created Take2Film.
We’ve just returned from Venice, we’re heading to London, and next year we’ll be doing it all over again—taking small groups of film lovers inside some of the world’s great festivals, including Cannes and Venice, London and Berlin….with more to come.
The films are at the center of it, of course. But so are the conversations afterward, the critic who tells you what they saw in a film you hated, the programmer who points you toward something you never would have chosen, and the person sitting next to you who says, “You have to see this.”
In other words, for a few days, we turn off the algorithm and let curiosity take over.
If you’ve ever wanted to experience a film festival from the inside—or come back and experience one differently—we’d love to have you join us.
Take2Film — Come for the films everyone is talking about. Discover the ones they will be.
– Julie
