Phie Ambo’s Mechanical Love kicked off this year’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. The two main story lines follow a Kyoto engineer working on making a “geminoid” of himself (and quizzing his daughter on which she likes better) and the rise of mechanical pets for the elderly.

While there are some fascinating questions raised by the subject matter, the focus on the engineers rather than then humans who interact with their mechanical creations tends to keep the questions on the philosophical level rather than a more spiritual or humanistic one.