In the Netherlands, 300 police reports a week are filed for smartphone-theft. Besides losing your expensive device, a stranger has access to all of your photos, videos, e-mails, messages and contacts. Yet, what kind of person steals a phone? And where do stolen phones eventually end up? The short documentary ‘Find My Phone’ follows a stolen phone’s second life by means of using spyware. Although you’ll meet the person behind the theft up close and personal, the question remains: how well can you actually get to know someone when you base yourself on the information retrieved from their phone?

Find my Phone is Anthony’s’ graduation film with which he graduated in 2015 as a film maker at the Willem de Kooning Academy obtaining the bachelor’s degree in audiovisual designer. Before Anthony created the film, he had to do extensive research on the technical aspects of making a bait phone, but also on the legal and ethical aspects of it. With the film, Anthony wanted the audience to think about privacy on their smartphone, without mentioning the word privacy. After publishing Find my Phone online in November 2016, the film went viral and got a lot of national and international media attention including interviews on BBC Newsday and The Times. The film currently has over 7 million views on YouTube.