The Congress

Robin Wright plays a version of herself in The Congress: an actress whose career has stalled as she approaches middle age and whose finances are running out. A major studio, Miramount, offers her a deal. She would sell the rights to her own likeness so the studio can scan her and use a digital version of her in any film it chooses, freeing the real woman from ever having to perform again. Her son's medical needs push her toward accepting. Two decades later, the world has been transformed by that technology, and she returns as an honored guest at a large industry congress, in a place where the line between what is real and what is manufactured has largely broken down.

Ari Folman directed and wrote the screenplay, basing it on a novel by Stanislaw Lem. The film followed his Saint Clara and his animated documentary Waltz with Bashir, and came before Where Is Anne Frank. The cast includes Harvey Keitel, Jon Hamm, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Danny Huston and Sami Gayle. Wright also served as one of the producers. Made with a budget of about 34 million dollars, the film is an international co-production involving Germany, Belgium, Israel, Luxembourg, Poland and France. It drew modest audience scores, sitting at 6.4/10 on IMDb and the same figure on TMDB, while a critics' rating of 6.7/10 from 107 reviews places it somewhat higher than the general public's view of it.