Logos launches interactive film on life's hard choices

Logos has launched an interactive film, Life Choices, following three fictional characters in the UK, Nigeria and the US.

The project is the second part of the group's wider Past, Present, Future campaign, which examines what it describes as systemic pressures affecting daily life.

Life Choices uses a branching format that asks viewers to choose one of three characters and make decisions on their behalf. Those choices change the direction of each story, but the film is designed to show how policy, law and institutional rules can limit the outcomes available to each person.

The three storylines focus on debt, corruption and digital surveillance. Michael, a young man in Britain, faces long-term financial strain tied to education costs, work and saving decisions. Nedu, an activist in Nigeria, navigates bribery and the misuse of public funds while trying to clean up a local river. Amanda, based in the US, confronts the effects of online data collection on privacy, employment prospects and mental health.

According to Logos, the film explains the legal or institutional basis behind each turning point. After each decision, viewers are shown a law, policy or institutional change that shaped the outcome, including examples related to higher education costs.

The visual design also mirrors each story's progression. Scenes begin in brighter colours and grow more muted as each character's options narrow.

Campaign structure

Life Choices follows an earlier campaign element, the Museum of Civil Liberties, which focused on what Logos sees as the erosion of freedoms over time. The new film shifts the focus to present-day experiences and aims to connect broad structural issues with personal consequences.

Logos describes itself as a decentralised network and movement building tools to protect civil liberties. Alongside the film, it points viewers to Logos Circles, local groups of activists, builders and researchers working on issues such as privacy tools, funding models and community infrastructure.

The organisation says those circles operate autonomously using open-source tools. Their work is framed around what it calls local, winnable issues in areas ranging from technology to neighbourhood improvements.

Creative approach

The project's central idea is that people often struggle to grasp the weight of hardship they have not experienced themselves. By placing viewers in the role of decision-maker, the film tries to narrow that gap and make structural pressures feel more immediate.

Each storyline is fictional, but the themes draw on real-world concerns. Michael's story examines how debt can persist for decades. Nedu's path explores the trade-offs people face when corruption shapes public life. Amanda's route looks at how collected personal data can affect opportunities beyond the online sphere.

A screenshot released by the group shows a landing page where viewers choose which character to follow first. Different decisions lead to different endings, though the project's premise is that some constraints remain constant regardless of the route selected.

Roxana Nasoi outlined that argument in comments accompanying the launch.

"Every choice these characters face is a stand-in for a cost someone inherited without ever agreeing to the terms," said Roxana Nasoi, Community BD Lead, Logos.

"We made up these three characters, but the cost each of them is paying is real. Governing bodies and institutions made those decisions years ago, and current and future generations are still paying for them, with no say in how they were made or changed. We're asking people to sit inside the decisions and see the real facts behind them. For anyone ready to make a change, Logos Circles offer a way to exit these systems and start building the alternative," Nasoi said.

Logos frames the film around systems rather than personal responsibility. In its view, the outcomes shown in the storylines should not be read simply as bad judgment or bad luck, but as the product of wider conditions that shape the choices available.

That framing aligns with the broader campaign, which links present-day experiences to earlier political and institutional decisions. By combining interactive storytelling with references to specific rules and policies, the film serves as both an educational tool and a route into local organising.

The first episode centres on viewer participation through choice-based storytelling, but its core message is that the range of meaningful choices may already have been constrained before the characters act.