The film is also the first ever to be narrated by a robot -- a possible sign of what's to come in the motion picture industry.

"When I started making the movie, the idea of robots killing people was very trendy, people were talking about the theoretical possibilities," Pozdorovkin told AFP.

Most cautionary tales about automation have considered "what robots will be able to do in the future," he said.

"But I'm more interested in how technology presently works on us. How is automation transforming us? This is a deeper issue, fundamental to who we are as a species."

The movie considers laws for robots first imagined by Isaac Asimov in the his 1942 short story "Runaround," which states that machines must not harm humans.