The fantasy of creating the ‘ideal’ woman is as old as Pygmalion, but how close is it to becoming a reality?

This provocative documentary reveals the state of the art in artificial companions - from life-sized silicone sex dolls to humanoid robots - and offers a surprisingly human, at times humorous, look at the men who build, animate, and love them.

Allison de Fren is an Assistant Professor of Art History and the Visual Arts at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

She is a film and media scholar, as well as an award-winning media practitioner, whose dissertation on representations of artificial female bodies, from the Renaissance to the present, grew out of making this documentary.

The film explores the ways in which the fantasy of perfection both informs and conflicts with the current-day attempt to create robotic companions.

Part of our 'stranger than fiction' documentary programme.