A documentary by Manu Luksch, Martin Reinhart, and Thomas Tode. In English, French, and German, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable.

Consisting entirely of images from silent and early sound films, Dreams Rewired is a nocturnal tour of the wired world, starting with telephony in the 19th century. Collaging together sometimes scattershot footage with stark animation, the tale travels through the arrival of cinema itself, followed by radio and television. The advent of digital media is merely suggested by the prototypes, and the human aspirations, on offer.

The 85-minute film’s narration chores fall entirely to Tilda Swinton, who perhaps takes over too much of its personality. Our favourite gender-bending vampire not only delivers a somewhat nebulous message about the inevitability of digital connection (typical line: “The future asks to be invented yet again”), she also ad-libs perceived dialogue from some of the silent-picture snippets chosen to illustrate their assertions.

The strongest elements are also some of the most influential, including the montage-heavy propaganda of Dziga Vertov, plus several sequences from the rarely seen Soviet sci-fi flick Aelita (1924). Also interesting is the proto–CCTV set up by the Nazis for their 1936 Olympics.

There’s a slightly deadening drumbeat of implied menace—mostly involving military and government surveillance—running through Dreams. The effect is more somnambulistic than stimulating, and eventually you’re less concerned about Big Brother peering into your home than you are about getting Tilda Swinton out of your head.