Justin Sovine

Founder and host, Grime Ethics Media

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Justin Sovine runs Grime Ethics Media, a Cincinnati arts group that puts on independent and experimental film screenings. It started on the music side of the city’s experimental scene and moved into film in 2025.

Justin picks the films, books the room, gets the word out, and hosts the night. For the first screening, Justin Tomchuk’s animated feature Interface at the Esquire Theatre on October 2, 2025, that meant arranging the screening with the filmmaker, putting posters and postcards up around town, going live on Facebook the afternoon of the show, and introducing the film from the stage to 56 people. Afterward, Justin animated and edited the recap of the night.

Based: Cincinnati, Ohio
Role: Founder and host, Grime Ethics Media
Hosted: Interface, Esquire Theatre, October 2025

Screenings

Interface, Justin Tomchuk’s 2022 animated feature, at the Esquire Theatre in Cincinnati, October 2, 2025. See the Esquire’s listing and the Facebook event.

Videos

The introduction from the stage, Interface, October 2025.
The recap of the night, animated and edited by Justin.
What’s next for Grime Ethics Media?, a livestream the afternoon of the screening.

From the introduction

“As artificial intelligence rapidly evolves, we’re witnessing the commodification of human thoughtspace. Our attention, creativity, and consciousness is becoming raw material for corporate systems to harvest and process. Out of circuitry and code, we have begun to raise a false god in our own image. An idol that consumes our attention as sacrifice, feeding on the very minds that built it, proof that gods that we create always require more than they give.”

“Like high fashion gesturing at patterns we’ll see on the streets tomorrow, Interface previews anxieties we will perhaps encounter in years to come.”

– Justin Sovine, introducing Interface at the Esquire Theatre, October 2, 2025

Watch Justin’s introduction from the stage

Read the transcript

Photos

All photos of Justin Sovine, free to use with a credit. Click any photo for the full size.

Headshots: 2026, and an older one.

Justin Sovine on stage at the Esquire Theatre introducing Interface, seen from the back of the room, the film's art on the screen — The Interface screening at the Esquire Theatre, Cincinnati, October 2, 2025: on stage (a still from the night’s video) and going over the introduction before doors; and with the poster the day it came back from the printer.

Justin Sovine in overalls, reading over the introduction outside before doors — The Interface screening at the Esquire Theatre, Cincinnati, October 2, 2025: on stage (a still from the night’s video) and going over the introduction before doors; and with the poster the day it came back from the printer.

Elsewhere

By day, Justin is a software engineer. More about that, and the rest, at justinsovine.com.

For press, photos and bookings, email or see the press page.