Andrew Garfield’s Artificial has landed in the Oscar conversation before its December release — thanks to a London Film Festival premiere that left audiences breathless and critics buzzing. The Luca Guadagnino-directed drama, which dramatises the five-day fire-and-rehire saga of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in 2023, didn’t just get applause. It got goosebumps. And not just from fans. From Altman himself, who reportedly waved at Garfield during filming outside his home, though Garfield swears he didn’t see him. 'I would have remembered,' he said on the red carpet, deadpan. 'I was so aware of looking for him.' That moment. Real or imagined, only deepened the film’s uncanny realism. The movie isn’t just about tech. It’s about power, ego, and the quiet terror of being handed the future. Garfield, who plays Altman with eerie precision, called it 'a really intense shoot'. And admitted he still doesn’t know what kind of man Altman truly is. 'He’s unfolding before our eyes as we speak,' he said. 'Like AI itself, I guess.' The film’s cast includes Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskever, Monica Barbaro as Mira Murati, Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk (who, per Barinholtz, he’d never heard of before), and Mark Rylance as Geoffrey Hinton. All were present at the Royal Festival Hall, where Guadagnino introduced the film with a rare humility: 'The world of Silicon Valley is the least seductive visually,' he admitted. 'But I hope you’ll be seduced anyway.' He spent months researching the inner workings of OpenAI, the code, the boardrooms, the panic. The result? A film that feels less like fiction and more like a warning. Amazon MGM Studios dropped it in June, after a $50 billion investment in OpenAI. But Neon picked it up and is now pushing it hard for awards. Altman, for his part, hasn’t seen the film yet. He told Vanity Fair he didn’t speak to anyone at Amazon about the drop, including Jeff Bezos. But he did confirm Garfield nailed his walk. 'Quirky mannerisms,' he said. Garfield, ever the realist, shrugged: 'So flattered that anyone’s going to see this film in the first place.' The Oscars may be months away. But the buzz? Already here. And it’s not just about performance. It’s about timing. About relevance. About the moment when a movie stops being entertainment and starts feeling like prophecy. Next stop: awards season. If the film holds its nerve, it might just become the year’s most talked-about thriller, not because it’s scary, but because it’s true.