Winners of the 2025 Sloan Science in Cinema Fellowship:

TALK BLACK
Writer/Director: Destiny Macon
A timid engineer develops an audacious split personality to help her stand up to the boys' club at work and prevent "urban renewal" in the historically black neighborhood where she grew up.

This marks the second Sloan grant for Destiny Macon’s TALK BLACK, which previously earned a 2023 Sloan Screenwriting Fellowship at Athena Film Festival.

THE GREEN CORRIDOR
Writer/Director: Justin Kim WooSŏk
Joseph Yoon, a Korean-American anthropologist, returns to his homeland on a Fulbright grant, drawn by rumors of a tiger’s reappearance in the DMZ—a creature long thought extinct on the peninsula. As he partners with a sound ecologist working along the border’s edge, their pursuit transforms into a confrontation with colonial ghosts, personal grief, and the limitations of human perception.

Awarded to two projects at the screenwriting phase of development, the Sloan Science in Cinema Filmmaker Fellowship celebrates projects that explore scientific or technological themes or characters by awarding their creators a $35,000 cash grant and access to the FilmHouse, SFFILM's creative hub independent filmmakers. Previous winners include filmmakers Sara Crow, David Rafailedes, and Lara Palmqvist.

Winners of the 2025 Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund:

HELLO NEIGHBOR
Writer: Lane Unsworth
With humanity on the cusp of potentially finding life on Jupiter’s moon, Europa, a lonely and retired child science entertainer gets recruited to the NASA public relations team to help answer the question: if we do find life, how do we tell everyone?

ONE INCH FROM EARTH
Writers: Sid Gopinath, Aditya Joshi
A group of plucky scientists must overcome NASA leadership, rival teams, the specter of Mars, and the US government to launch a mission that proves life exists on a distant moon of Jupiter.

The SFFILM Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund awards up to $20,000 grants to filmmakers whose nascent scripts draw inspiration from the Stories of Science Sourcebook. Composed of significant discoveries in STEM made in recent years, the sourcebook offers a wellspring of inspiration to filmmakers interested in crafting compelling narratives which dramatize the scientific breakthroughs and discoveries of our time.

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MABEL. Dir. Nicholas Ma.
No one gets Callie, an awkward pre-teen whose one friend, Mabel, is a plant. As Callie's obsession grows, she is put at odds with her mother and jeopardizes her first chance at a real friendship.

Nicholas Ma’s debut feature MABEL, starring Judy Greer, made its world premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival in April 2024, where it screened as part of SFFILM’s Sloan Science in Cinema Initiative, highlighting its thoughtful engagement with biological science.

MABEL previously received the $100,000 Sloan Feature Film Production Award at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2019, followed by a Sloan Screenplay Development Award from the Tribeca Film Institute in 2020. Through its portrayal of a young protagonist discovering science as refuge, MABEL exemplifies the Sloan Foundation’s mission to foster nuanced depictions of science that resonate across age groups.

Distributed by Tribeca Releasing, MABEL opened in select U.S. theaters on April 17, 2026, with screenings in New York and Los Angeles. The film is now available nationwide on VOD platforms such including Prime Video and Apple TV.

JOHN LILLY AND THE EARTH COINCIDENCE CONTROL OFFICE. Dirs. Courtney Stephens, Michael Almereyda.
A visionary neuroscientist explores the limits of consciousness through isolation tanks, communication with dolphins, and psychedelic experiments, transforming himself from researcher to mystical explorer.

Narrated by Chloë Sevigny, the documentary premiered at the 54th International Film Festival Rotterdam in February 2025, where it attracted critical attention for its layered portrait of a controversial scientific figure and the countercultural influences surrounding his work.

In addition to being co-directed by previous Sloan grantee Michael Almereyda (TESLA, MARJORIE PRIME), the film was also directly supported by a 2023 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Feature Film Grant.

After its festival run, Oscilloscope Laboratories released the film theatrically in the United States, kicking off with theatrical engagements in New York on March 27, 2026. Nationwide screenings are still taking place across the country, with dates in New Mexico, Ohio, California, Oregon and Washington still to come. For folks without access to a local art-house cinema, the documentary will be available on VOD via Prime Video, Apple TV and Google Play as of May 1, 2026.

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Science & Film: Can you talk about the inception of this project?

Giulio Bertelli: Well, the very inception of the project, the very beginning, I was thinking about, what if I would write for an animation, actually, not a live action film—this was many, many years ago—about a modern Joan of Arc, the medieval, historical figure, in the contemporary context. So I was thinking, what if she's a fencer, and what if she kills someone at the Olympics? And all of a sudden, the Olympics becomes this political, geopolitical kind of backdrop to which she has to undergo trial. And this is because there was, of course, an interest from looking at the historical nature of what we now consider sports and its relationship to the history of warfare. How we went from officers in moments of peace time, training for war, to then actually creating this modern Olympics, or the ancient Greek ones. Athletes are using sports basically as a proxy for war.

S&F: I’m curious about how you filmed the athletes, and the particular preparations they undergo using technology.

GB: I think that there was an overall interest for me in this intersection between organic matter and technology. And I think the surgery [of the knee in the film] is a very explicit juxtaposition of these two elements. It's literally a technological, robotic kind of element that is human built to carve into the body, and into flesh and blood. So I think this juxtaposition is at the core of some of my main interests that I also would like to explore further in cinema. This served well on how to portray these women in the context of trying to achieve their sport results and all of the sacrifices that comes with it. The film on one hand uses this theoretical kind of wide shot presentation or argument, within which these athletes, this person, this human body, kind of move across trying to get the result. And I think I was interested in looking at the two extremes, so the very visceral, body-like, following the character, and at the same time, the more theoretical macro pattern of what the film is, and what is this investigation about sport.

S&F: I really appreciate how much is done in the film without dialog.

GB: In its writing, there was much more in the script. So the film, as often happens, particularly for a first-time filmmaker, it had different life, and it had different script. At a certain point, the story became, in a way, more contrived, smaller, which I think helps a lot to really not waste any energy in focusing on what we are really trying to do, and what was the story that we were really trying to tell. And the shooting script, or the script prior to pre-production, had more dialogues. But what I realized at the beginning of shooting the film, and then furthermore throughout all of the shooting and in the editing phase, was that the film had its own identity in a way, and I had to let it go where it kind of asked me to. So of course, it's my film, and it's my decision, but it felt like it was asking to be slightly darker than I expected or asking me to be more silent that I'd expected, almost like the spoken words were not helping to convey that sense of solitude or anxiety or pressure [that I wanted to depict].

S&F: What kind of research did you do to learn about the technologies we see depicted?

GB: There was a lot of research done in multiple layers: on each sport, on medicine and sports technology, and in general. A lot of it was kind of already done by myself in the many years of having just a strong interest in video games or interaction-based digital tools. And so, I was aware of what is going on in, let's say, in the world, and where the world is going in terms of all of these digital tools. I just kind of compiled them with the research on all of the specific sports and with my personal experience as a former professional athlete, and I think it kind of landed itself on what was needed, and what was not needed. But, for instance, one specific instance about what I'm talking about is that there is this training tool for learning how to be a better shooter in the virtual world in video games, following yellow spheres on a screen. There are these recurrent kinds of elements, and I was very fascinated by the fact that at a cognitive level, there are a lot of digital tools that come from very different industries, whether it's entertainment, whether it's video games, whether it's medical, but they kind of share the same cognitive pattern. They're kind of built on the same idea. So I was also fascinated by looking at this intersection.

S&F: I happen to have curated an exhibition that's about medical imaging and the body, and how those tools shape how we think about the body. I feel like with your film, there's that feedback loop in the training of the athletes, through digital tools, they become more and more sort of machine like.

GB: Where is this exhibition? Because I'm very interested about that, regardless of the film like, if I could have, I would have made... you know that sequence in the film that you see before the opening titles, there's a CT scan of a knee that kind of slowly turns and then becomes the opening titles.

S&F: I love that.

GB: Yeah, that's a CGI sequence that I made myself using a medical tool. It's made with an off the shelf medical tool, because I was working with the CGI and they just couldn't get what I was trying to do. So I said, guys, I'm just gonna use the real tool. Make it myself. It's going to take like, a week, and that's it.

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Science & Film: Can you talk about the genesis of this project?

G. Anthony Svatek: I grew up in Austria, and I knew about the name Humboldt, I just didn't really know who the person was. I just knew the name, and I knew that he was a scientist, but not much more than that. And then around 2015 this book called The Invention of Nature came out that became a huge hit and best seller. It paints this picture of Alexander von Humboldt to be this gay, proto-environmentalist, who predicted man-made climate change 200 years ago. The book is a very heroic hagiography of him. And it's a very compelling read, and that's what got me hooked.

I noticed there were these biographical parallels between him and me. He's German, called himself half American. I'm Austrian, half American. We have the same birthday. We're both gay. There are these little biographical parallels that was just like almost a hand, like, waving over here and being like, hello. I just couldn't get him out of my mind. And it became this obsession where I started reading more and more biographies, and there was a more complex image of him as a person, and his impact on Western science and scientific history became clear. And I noticed there were all these names everywhere, all over the globe, specifically in the United States. I found out that he was, at one point, the most well-known, most famous person in the in the Western Hemisphere, next to Napoleon. They knew each other, but they hated each other. And I thought that was such an interesting kind of conceit to track his name and try to see how the shadow that he's cast on science and scientific history manifests itself in these Humboldt place names. So, it wasn't about making another biography about him or biographical film. It was much more about, what are the reverberations in contemporary America, specifically, that speak to his vision of an interconnected world, how science is interconnected with culture, interconnected with history, interconnected with the planet, ecology, all these things that at the time, were quite radical within the scientific, Western paradigm, and that at some point got eclipsed by both Darwin and this kind of technological interconnectedness that I go into as a theme in in the film.

S&F: I remember that book, it certainly felt revelatory.

GS: Yeah, I mean, he's the most used namesake in the world. There are more species, things, and places named after him than anybody else in history. But he didn't name any of them himself. He was never in any of the Humboldt place names, except for the Humboldt Current off the coast of Chile. He didn't name those things. He just became so well known that all these Western pioneers and colonists and scientists, they had his name in mind as they explored these places. They just slapped his name onto whatever they could find.

Still from HUMBOLDT USA

S&F: How did you home in on the aspect of Humboldt's science that you wanted to depict in the film?

GS: What's so hard in sort of pitching Humboldt as a person is that he touched on everything. He was such a polymath. He wrote about history and world history, and he wrote about volcanoes, he wrote about the oceans. He was a raging abolitionist, and whenever it was safe for him to, he railed against the colonial system set up by the European powers, even though he very much worked within that system as well. So there's this extra complication, right? But what it all comes back to is this extremely broad idea: everything is interconnectedness. The German phrase is Alles ist Wechselwirkung, which, to me, is almost like a trite thing to say nowadays, but I feel like the meaning of interconnectedness has changed so much and his meaning of interconnectedness has been eclipsed by this technological, infrastructural, economical interconnectedness that he would have very much proposed as well, and would have been in favor of. He was all about sharing information. He was all about development and making a network that spans across the globe of information sharing.

But now we're 200 years later. We're sort of at the tail end of that development, right? He said all these things at the advent of the Industrial Revolution and a fossil fuel based capitalist system. And now we're at the other side of that, and we're more disconnected from each other, the natural world, ourselves, than ever before. So this interconnectedness, I wanted that to be reflected in these three story lines that are explored in the film.

S&F: Your film was a participant in our "Working on It" section of First Look last year, and this year you'll be presenting the New York premiere with us. Can you talk about how the experience of Working on It informed the film?

GS: We were so lucky to have been asked to participate in the work in progress section, which I had attended for many years, and I saw how fruitful it was for various film teams. It also opened a space for some safe vulnerability and feedback. Specifically, I want to mention Kaija Siirala. A co-editor on the film. For months it was just the two of us talking to each other. And there comes a point where there is enough material, it has all these open question marks and unclosed loops, and it's okay to start showing that to the world and seeing what the reaction is.

Still from HUMBOLDT USA

And it was so, so great doing it at that point, because I had been wrestling with this question of like, is this an idea driven film, or is this more a humanist kind of observational film? And at that point, when we showed it in March last year, I hadn't entirely made up my mind yet. I wasn't even sure whether the voiceover would be part of it, but it was very, very clear after that screening that the folks who were in the audience reacted so much to the sense of humor, the kind of interpersonal quality, the observational style, and also kind of the warmth that does kind of come through in the material. And I didn't know whether that would translate, or how that would land, and that was the first kind of indication of, like, oh, you know what this film is, it's not a more academic, removed, sober and cold exploration of an idea. It really is driven by these observational scenes that we filmed with the participants in the film. And so ultimately, we really leaned into that more and more, and I think that makes the film stronger. I've made films before that play with humor and sort of use that as a way to reach out to the audience. And here, you can laugh at this, you can feel embraced. That gives you access to the ideas and the topics that are quite dire and that are quite dark in a way, but it's okay to bring you along. And so the WIP screening really was pivotal in that regard, and I'm very grateful for it. I'm very, very proud of that process.

S&F: I'm curious about your relationship to Humboldt now, having made the film.

GS: So the arc of the of the voiceover is this idea of a love letter from me to him, because that's how it started for me. I did really feel like I fell in love with him throughout time and in history. And the more time you spend with someone and someone's ideas, the more complex they become, the more dark stuff you see, too, and the more you wrestle with them as well, but that just means you're getting closer to a truer picture and understanding of who they are. And so the film traces that kind of trajectory. It starts off kind of rose-tinted, and then at some point shifts, and the tone of the film shifts as well, and a more nuanced, complicated, complex portrait emerges, and I'm now on the other end of that. We finished the film in the fall last year, and I took a break, a well-deserved break from work for about a month. But I have since started new work and new projects, and that has, in many ways, helped in letting go. I say that now as the film is released into the world, so I'll probably get thrown back in. But, you know, it felt like an encounter with Humboldt through people who I met in these Humboldt towns. They all represent a tiny bit, like a mosaic and collage of who Humboldt was, who I believe Humboldt was, and I feel very much enriched by that, and extremely grateful. I've learned a lot as about me as a filmmaker, as an artist, and collaborations and interdependence.

♦

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Below, read more about the winning projects and check out photos from the celebration.

The winner of the 2025 Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize:

GOD MAKERS by Quinn Spicker (AFI)
Logline: In this true story for the battle over ChatGPT, academic researcher Helen Toner takes on tech-industrialist Sam Altman in an attempt to control the future of AI.

Jury Citation: “Keenly constructed and propulsively written, God Makers tackles a pivotal moment in human history. In anchoring the script in the perspective of a woman in STEM, Quinn Spicker has crafted a fresh, nuanced take on the story audiences think they know about Sam Altman, ChatGPT, and the future of artificial intelligence. The jury is delighted to award the Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize to GOD MAKERS.”

Honorable Mention for the 2025 Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize:

SLEDHEAD by Ellie Melick (Carnegie Mellon University)
Logline: When her cousin — and hero — loses a long battle with mental illness, U.S.A. Skeleton athlete Ingrid Anderson puts her Olympic dreams on the line to help neurological researchers investigate how sliding sports damage the brain.

The winner of the 2025 Sloan Student Discovery Prize:

THE HEAD CASES by Nora Kaye (Brooklyn College)
Logline: Two brilliant, stubborn women—a rebellious young scientist and her exacting former professor—must overcome their mutual hatred to save the professor’s fading mind, testing their unorthodox Alzheimer’s treatment in a high stakes experiment that blurs the line between genius and recklessness.

Jury citation: “Balancing relatable emotional stakes with laugh-out-loud humor, THE HEAD CASES’s distinctive tone and sparkling dialogue make it an engrossing read. Nora Kaye’s charming two-hander explores the personal motivations and ethical challenges faced by scientists who devote their careers to combatting devastating diseases like Alzheimer’s. The jury is pleased to award the Sloan Student Discovery Prize to THE HEAD CASES”

Quinn Spicker and Nora Kaye. Photo Credit: Thanassi Karageorgiou.

Nora Kaye and guests at awards reception. Photo Credit: Thanassi Karageorgiou.

Quinn Spicker, Evan Ratliff and Nora Kaye. Photo Credit: Thanassi Karageorgiou.

A fully packed house applauds the cast performing an excerpt from God Makers. Photo Credit: Thanassi Karageorgiou.

More from Sloan Science and Film:

• 2025 Sloan Student Prize Winners Announced
• Sloan Film Update: 2025 Winners from Carnegie Mellon University
• 2025 Sloan Student Prize Finalists and Mentors Announced

Winner of the 2026 Sloan Science on Screen Award:

SILENT FRIEND. Dir. Ildikó Enyedi. An ancient ginkgo tree enchants longing souls across more than a century in this spellbinding cinematic triptych starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Léa Seydoux.

SFFILM’s April 26 screening will feature a conversation between director Ildikó Enyedi and a member of the scientific community. Enyedi will also be in person for the film’s New York premiere on May 2 at First Look 2026.

Beyond SILENT FRIEND, we have identified the other science and technology themed films to look out for at SFFILM 2026, as well as the Sloan grantees showcasing new work at the festival. Below, read more about these exciting projects – including First Look 2026 selections JOYBUBBLES and HOT WATER – with descriptions quoted from the festival programmers.

Science Films at SFFFILM 2026:

DAUGHTERS OF THE FOREST: MYCELIUM CHRONICLES. Dir. Otilia Portillo Padua. “The mushrooms speak in this inventive sci-fi documentary that follows indigenous female mycologists as they document and preserve the intricate bonds between humans and fungi.”

JOYBUBBLES. Dir. Rachael Morrison. “Born blind and longing for connection, Joe Engressia—later known as Joybubbles—discovers he can hack the analog telephone network with whistles, transforming curiosity into connection and sparking the phone-phreak movement.”

Still from JOYBUBBLES. Courtesy of Visit Films.

Catch the New York premiere of JOYBUBBLES with director Rachael Morrison in person on May 2, 2026 as part of MoMI’s First Look 2026.

NUISANCE BEAR. Dirs: Gabriela Osio Vanden, Jack Weisman. “A yearling polar bear embodies his species in this immersive, poetic Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, revealing the tense, fraught balance between humans and nature’s apex predator.”

SPACE CADET. Dir. Kid Koala. “A young astronaut embarks on her first mission, leaving her caretaker robot behind in this music-driven, animated adventure that spans the universe.”

TIME & WATER. Dir. Sara Dosa. “Writer Andri Snær Magnason reckons with the death of Okjökull, the first glacier lost to climate change, as Sara Dosa’s striking documentary blends vanishing ice, family memory, and urgent witness.”

Sloan Grantees at SFFILM 2026:

Ramzi Bashour, who earned Sloan grants in 2018 and 2021 for THE TREES and YES CHEF AND THE MUSHROOM KING respectively, will present his new feature film HOT WATER following its New York premiere at First Look 2026:

HOT WATER. Dir. Ramzi Bashour. “Ramzi Bashour’s poignant road movie depicts an anxious mother transporting her delinquent son from Indiana to California and highlights the glories of the American Midwest while unpacking the dynamics of parenting and letting go.”

Still from HOT WATER. Courtesy of Rich Spirit.

Cristina Costantini, whose documentary SALLY won the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, will present a new film as part of a mid-length program at SFFILM:

LA TIERRA DEL VALOR (THE HOME OF THE BRAVE). Dir. Cristina Costantini. Nezza (Vanessa Hernandez) defies orders at a Dodgers game, singing the US national anthem in Spanish, honoring the 1945 “El Pendón Estrellado,” and inspiring hope in her community.

Jess X. Snow, whose film ROOTS THAT REACH TOWARD THE SKY earned a Sloan production award at NYU in 2021, co-directed a new short film that will be presented as part of SFFILM’s 2026 Shorts Block 1: Human Flow:

TAMASHI. Dirs. Jess X. Snow, Ashima Shiraishi. “Traverse cityscapes, valleys, highways, and borders through films by an international ensemble of storytellers. Conversations between people and land are as alive as human dialogue in these earnest portrayals of gathering and return.”

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Sci-fi author Andy Weir likes to put his scientist-protagonists in isolated situations where they have to think their way out of a serious problem. The 2015 film THE MARTIAN, based on Weir’s novel, showed how plant biologist and NASA astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) gets accidentally marooned on Mars, where he is completely alone but survives. In the film PROJECT HAIL MARY, adapted from Weir’s book of the same name, molecular biologist and reluctant astronaut Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) also finds himself alone, in a sterile high-tech chamber with no idea how he got there. Eventually he – and we – learn that he’s on a starship headed light-years out into space.

As his memory returns, Grace discovers that his goal is to solve a problem bigger than his own survival: the survival of all of humanity. In a few decades the world will suffer catastrophic global cooling because a ravenous microorganism is taking the Sun’s energy for its own life processes.

Grace might seem a poor bet for this task. His theory that alien life does not necessarily need water as Earth life does – long assumed by most biologists in the real world – destroyed his research career. He now teaches middle-school science. But his maverick idea brings him to the attention of Project Hail Mary, the last-ditch international effort to stop the destructive lifeform. Working with the Project, Grace learns more about the organism he names “astrophage” or “star-eater,” such as the fact that it needs CO₂ to reproduce. Through a series of unexpected events, he ends up alone on a trip to the star Tau Ceti that is not infected by astrophage and may offer a way to combat it.

However, Grace finds he’s not really alone. He encounters an alien spacecraft and its sole surviving crewmember, a blocky, mineral-like creature (James Ortiz, voice and puppeteer). They find a way to talk and Grace dubs the alien “Rocky.” Rocky’s home planet Erid and his fellow Eridians are also under threat from astrophage attacking their sun. The two are each happy to have company and they bond as they work together. They learn each other’s ways, tell jokes and also squabble like mismatched roommates, and develop mutual trust. Their cooperation pays off when they find a biological way to kill astrophage and save their worlds; and their friendship inspires Grace to save Rocky’s life at a great personal cost, though Grace survives.

The science in the film covers several areas but the main scientific questions swirl around the astrophage. Though it could end humanity, it has desirable properties too, storing vast energies and shielding against radiation. But how could a biological entity possibly live near the Sun and harvest its unimaginable flow of energy? Is Weir’s novel sci-fi idea at all realistic?

In the book Project Hail Mary, Weir works hard to make the astonishing properties of astrophage at least conceivable. The necessary exposition is presented through Grace’s own thoughts and actions as he and others investigate astrophage. Hollywood generally puts story over science, and little of this level of detail survives in the film, but the issues remain and push us past the limits of established biology and physics.

How far beyond the limits of these fields becomes clear if we consider the real biological process of plant photosynthesis. Here too a cell gathers solar energy, which is stored as it initiates chemical reactions that rearrange molecules. But it’s the scale of the energy that lifts the astrophage process to a different level. In the book, scientists aim a powerful laser at a single astrophage cell. It absorbs the light for 25 minutes, then starts reflecting it, showing that it can hold no more energy. This maximum is 1.5 megajoules (1.5x10⁶joules). That’s a lot: it could raise a 3,000-pound auto to the top of a 30-story building. In comparison, the chemical energy stored in a single real photosynthetic cell is in the nanojoule range (10^-9 joules), only enough to raise a grain of dust a few feet. Clearly astrophage harvests energy far beyond what ordinary biochemistry can do.

The energy storage is also remarkably compact, with the 1.5 megajoules contained in a microbe-sized cell 10 micrometers (10^-5 meters) across. It is a tiny object with a tiny mass, and its energy is concentrated far beyond any real-world energy storage by many orders of magnitude, from fossil fuels to electric batteries, and even nuclear fuel. Yet the cell holds this vast energy without being violently disrupted. Equally unheard of, the absorbed energy does not raise the cell’s temperature. Conventional physics can’t explain this behavior, but the book provides an answer: neutrinos. These are real elementary particles with an extremely small mass that travel near the speed of light and pass nearly entirely undetected through ordinary matter.

In the story, neutrinos are postulated as being created by nuclear interactions in the astrophage cell, and instead of flying off, somehow operate there to manage the incoming energy. This is not possible in present-day physics, as Weir knows. He recently explained that the scenario is deliberately “made-up” and is the “only true violation of physics” in the story. But starting from his premise, Weir consistently and correctly works out its consequences, giving an overall aura of plausibility. I have to wonder, though, about the deeper validity of the exotic physics-biology combination. Early in the history of life in the universe, no living thing could sense or react to neutrinos at a perceptible level; so how would even the enormous flexibility of biological evolution eventually produce an organism that depends on neutrinos for its life cycle?

Other science in the film includes the clever design that uses astrophage to propel Grace’s ship to where he and Rocky discover how to defeat astrophage, a nice irony. The science behind Rocky’s alienness is developed too. When I first saw him on screen, I thought “silicon lifeform!” That’s an idea with some scientific basis that has been used in a STAR TREK episode. Life on Earth is based on the versatile carbon atom. Its four electron clouds pointing in different directions chemically bond to hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur to create the complex molecules of life. The element silicon also has atoms with four available bonds. One likely connection is to oxygen, producing rock-like and ceramic-like compounds. Life based on these compounds is far less likely than with carbon, but should it develop, the result might look somewhat like Rocky.

Weir, however, takes Rocky in a different direction. The film shows that Rocky and Grace cannot share the same atmosphere, and Grace notes ammonia-like compounds in Rocky’s surroundings. Weir explains this through the environment on Rocky’s home planet, Erid. It orbits the (real) star 40 Eridani A and has a high surface temperature and an ammonia-rich atmosphere at high pressure, which places it outside the conventional habitable zone for liquid water. Grace has found life beyond the established limits of water-based habitability, lending support to his earlier claim. But Rocky’s physiology is more complex than simply replacing water with ammonia, since it also uses water and other fluids such as liquid mercury. Rocky is an intricate lifeform existing outside the usual conditions of Earthly biology.

PROJECT HAIL MARY, the film, strikes a fair balance between conveying the science – though less extensively than the book – and telling a story where a supposedly failed scientist finds he’s a better researcher than he thought. He enjoys teaching science too as we see at the beginning and end of the film. These positive attitudes toward science and teaching are welcome, as are other important messages. In an ultimate example of diversity, a human and an utterly different alien find common ground and friendship. And a world facing climate change should take note: only a serious international commitment like the film’s Project Hail Mary can resolve a global threat.

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SATOSHI by Sara Crow and David Rafailedes
Logline: After her family loses everything in the 2008 financial crisis, a teenaged anime-obsessed hacktivist realizes money isn’t fair…so she sets out to reinvent it with a new digital currency called Bitcoin.

Crow and Rafailedes have previously earned four Sloan grants for SATOSHI since 2023, through the foundation’s partnerships with New York University, Sundance Institute, SFFILM, and Film Independent.

ERUPTION by Katla Sólnes
Logline: In the highlands of 1970s Iceland, a geologist’s wife finds her marriage tested when a wily American student arrives, stirring tensions as volatile as the surrounding volcanic landscape.

Sólnes’s ERUPTION has earned support from Sloan thrice before. In 2024 it earned a screenwriting grant at Columbia University and would go on to earn Sólnes Sloan fellowships at Athena Film Festival later that year and at Sundance Institute the following. ERUPTION was also a finalist for the 2024 Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize.

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Science & Film: To start, I'd like to know how you got connected to the show, and what your role was.

Jonathan Mijs: All of this started three and a half years ago. I think someone from Dan Fogelman's production company reached out saying that he was excited to chat with me. I made myself available. And I was projected into a meeting room in LA with a bunch of sofas and, you know, people kind of lounging. The writers started peppering me with questions that were quite far-reaching. But essentially, they were all questions about equality and what a perfectly equal, egalitarian, perfect society would look like.

Now, I spend my days mostly thinking about everything that's wrong with society, all the societal ails that plague our world, and have made a research agenda of documenting how people understand those inequalities in their society, how they feel about it, and what makes people come to, if not wholeheartedly accept, at least allow this state of inequality to increase. For wealth to get a lot more concentrated and the gap to grow. This has been the story of a lot of Western societies over the last half a century. So there's a puzzle there, as in, how are people accepting this? I gave a TED talk on the topic years ago in London, that’s on YouTube. I think that's how they [the production] located me.

So here I was having to answer all of these, some, of them quite impossible questions about pretty much the opposite of what I normally work on, which is everything that's wrong with our unequal world. Here, I was asked to think about what would the opposite of that look like? What would a flourishing, egalitarian paradise look like? I found myself drawing from science fiction, drawing from philosophical thought experiments, but I also started thinking about where can social science research come in. What are some of the ingredients that we can draw on? After a couple of these sessions, after the series was green lit, I was commissioned to basically write a White Paper–that's what academics do, right? We write papers. So I wrote 30 or 40 pages trying to answer as best as possible all of these various questions. Given the scenario that a bunch of really wealthy people with almost unlimited resources are coming together to build this bunker society, that provides an opportunity for something like 30,000 or 40,000 people to rebuild society, how would one go about constructing, arranging this society, socially, politically? And how do you even go about selecting and deciding who gets to live in that society in the first place? Really big and impossible questions, but I found myself drawing on, in effect, the whole discipline that I come from: sociology.

It is this discipline that came out of the 18th and particularly 19th century, as Western societies were confronting these enormous changes of industrialization, of urbanization. The world was rapidly changing. And these thinkers were very much trying to answer these similarly broad questions about, for example, what's the role of religion in a society that is being changed by technology? Under all this rapid change, how do people stick together? Where do you find social cohesion when things are moving so quickly? How does power operate in a way that make people accept authority as legitimate? How do you create social order? As Emile Durkheim the French sociologist put it, how do you protect against a centrifugal force in society, and keep people together without making them feel that they're suffocating? How do you find that perfect balance, right?

So that’s basically what I did in that paper, go back to those early insights from those 19th century thinkers. Sociology is not social engineering. We do not have perfect answers to any of these questions. But we do have some kernels, some guidelines. And those are what I tried to put together in that report. So that ended up being some sort of food for thought, some of the fuel for the people in the writer's room.

Still from PARADISE

But, around the time that I was having these conversations, that's when the writer's strike happened and the actor's strike. So that was a huge pause. In fact, I thought that was the end of the project altogether, to be very frank. I didn't hear anything for a long time, obviously, until all of a sudden, I learned that things had restarted and then very quickly moved into production. Before I knew it, PARADISE had come alive and like any other enthusiastic audience member I got to sit there and watch how they took some of my ideas, brought in a lot of their own ideas, and ran with it. So that's how I've been enjoying the show, looking for traces of all those big question conversations that we've had, but, ultimately, also just enjoying the show for what it is, which is a cool dystopian thriller.

S&F: How much did you know about the premise of the show and where they were going with it?

JM: I knew the premise of the show and the storyline of the first season. I knew nothing about the second season, and I knew nothing about the details. I think I made this observation watching the show on the couch with my wife, and she immediately called me out for saying that my ego had gotten way too inflated, but there's this moment in the show where there's this European-sounding scientist flown in to help think through the development of all this [the bunker society]. And I'm like, did they kind of base this person, off of me? Is this how they saw me? In a similar way, I was invited to help think through the social engineering part of it, which, again, I'm ill-equipped to deliver on but that part of how do you socially, sustainably, create a society like this without knowing a lot of the important details? I think that's true for that character in the show, and it's very much true for me and my role as a technical consultant.

S&F: Any tips on what makes a successful society?

JM: I mean, yeah, it's hard, right? Because ultimately, as we learn as we watch the show, it's not a democracy, it's an oligarchy. There are a lot of things that look very harmonious and kind of perfect that ultimately fall apart. If I were to give some advice to people trying to keep everyone happy, first of all, you need to select people that are skilled, that have something to bring to the equation, that are talented, but you cannot just select people based on skills, based on talent? Then that that would mean having to sacrifice their families. That would mean having no place for so-called dependents. And what you can see in the show is that they've fully acknowledged that. The fact that one of those crucial dependents did not make it, Teri, Xavier's wife, is one of the biggest plot points. That motivates him to leave paradise, right? That's something that we can find in our current society, too. I think most everybody fully subscribes to the meritocracy. But, once you start thinking about what it actually entails, and you start to see how that actually conflicts with a lot of other important principles that we do subscribe to in our society, things like equality. You cannot just have merit take over everywhere. What about need? Does a child need to prove their deservingness of care, of food, of nourishment? That's fully unreasonable, and very much the opposite of what many people's intuition would say. You see that in the show they try to find a way to kind of reconcile those things.

Also, you see that there's a big emphasis on ceremonies and bringing people together. When the President passes away, everybody gathers in the stadium. There's remembrance. Those are really important things, and we see that in our society too. It's important to mark important moments, whether they're positive moments, like a graduation ceremony, or whether it's hardship like a death. You see the importance of these broader stories and narratives that give meaning to what this whole society actually is. These are the survivors. These are the people who are going to rebuild Earth. And as soon as it becomes clear that that's not entirely true, that there are other people out there, things very quickly fall apart. That also, I think, speaks to the importance of the idea of “American exceptionalism,” or like we are “the country of the free and the brave,” etc. Those are important cohesive forces in our society. And once people start puncturing holes in that, that is quite a threat, because if those kinds of narratives fall apart, then our collective identity falls apart. And with that, I think, the legitimacy of the political project. So, a lot of those things entered into the show in a very nice but nuanced way. Those are some of the ways in which I saw my own input be reflected in the show.

S&F: Do you know if there were other consultants on the show?

JM: There's one, an author who's written about environmental catastrophes. Then, more broadly, they were able to pull on real-life things, like billionaire bunkers. That's not an invention of the show. We do see that people are actively preparing for these kinds of scenarios. And by people, I mean a very, very select number of people who have those extraordinary fortunes and means and resources.

S&F: In the second season, the bunker in the Post Office feels more attainable for people without huge financial resources.

JM: Actually, I started realizing only after I started working on this show, how many nuclear fallout bunkers are still around me here in Boston. That was very much built into our society during the Cold War. You still see those logos sometimes on buildings, and there's a metro station around here where you need to go really deep into the ground, because that's one of those sorts of bunkers. So there was a lot of this that is not all that distant, but it's almost virtually erased from our memory.

Still from PARADISE

One more thing I want to say, is that I found it really enjoyable to be able to give scientific input into the project. But I should also readily admit that there’s a lot that the world of cinema, television, and art, more broadly, has to offer. There's only so much that scientists can contribute to painting a picture of a fairer, more egalitarian society. And there's a lot that artists can do. I think holding up that mirror of where our society is, there's only so much tolerance for lecturing people or providing the facts and writing reports and all of that. Whereas entertainment media are, I think, very effective tools to actually entertain people, but also make them think and perhaps reconsider and paint those pictures. I'm heartened by the success of this genre of dystopian science fiction, in particular. Think about movies like PARASITE or MINARI which is a little more nuanced. And then, all the other things, like SQUID GAME and such, SILO which actually resembles the premise of this show.

I've started with my students to bring together a lot of these utopian and dystopian sort of imaginaries in one place. We called it the Utopia Observatory, where we're pulling from film, television, but also literature and other sources, to bring these things together. I think those imaginaries are quite powerful in a way that dry facts and science sometimes just aren't. More from Sloan Science and Film:

• Archaeologist Consultant on IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE
• https://scienceandfilm.org/articles/3727/werner-herzogs-ghost-elephants
• Director Interview: TEENAGE WASTELAND

When doing consulting work, whether for feature films, documentaries or even novels, the major challenge is the pre-existing narrative that’s been a key part of the pitch and commission. If that narrative theme or story conflicts with issues around scientific accuracy or realism, then it produces a tension. Is it ethically or morally crucial to ensure as much accuracy as possible? How does that intersect with what the director or writer is trying to create emotionally? As a consultant, answering those questions and making decisions around them isn’t my role. I’m there to provide the most up-to-date scientific information and to fact-check, but also to give wider context for currently accepted ideas, and to suggest how likely or not something might be.

Archaeology is famous for combining elements of the humanities and sciences. We work with partial information that needs to be interpreted, just like historians, and we understand how the formation of our own datasets can result from, and produce, biases. But in doing 21^st century archaeology, we also draw on an immense array of scientific methods to help us obtain and analyze things. We excavate sites with forensic-level precision, recording 100,000s of tiny objects in 3D space; we extract DNA, not just from ancient bones, but from the cave dirt itself. And we use complex measurements and statistics and modelling to understand things, from patterns in artefact form, to the age at which a Neanderthal baby was weaned, to the movements across continents of entire populations. Ours is a vast field of enquiry, and it’s dynamic too. Ideas can change dramatically with single discoveries.

My contribution as a science consultant for film and television is partly about having that expert knowledge. But it’s also about being able to share it in a useful way. I need to be able to combine facts with informed inferences, to explain things clearly and succinctly to people who may have no familiarity at all with archaeology or scientific concepts in general. But that’s what makes it enjoyable, because it’s a creative, interactive process. It allows me to bring together my skills as a researcher, and an author and communicator, to help people expand their own imaginations.

The extent of my involvement varies a lot. In some cases, I’ve given feedback on a single version of a script, in other cases it went back and forth through numerous edits. I’ve also had the chance to watch and comment on early cuts. Sometimes everything happens by phone or Zoom, but I’ve also done in-person work, meeting producers, set and costume directors, and coaching actors. In situations like that where you’re being asked hundreds of questions on all sorts of subjects for hours. It can be very intense, but also brilliant fun. Sometimes changes I suggest are taken up and the production evolves differently because of that, but other times they’re not. Of course, if you aren’t part of the writing or editorial team, then those decisions are other people’s responsibilities.

For IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE, I was asked to comment largely on the story which takes place around 45,000 years ago, where a tiny group of Neanderthals seem to be dwindling towards extinction, but their fate is changed by an encounter. In this case, and other productions I’ve worked on, there’s often a desire to represent Neanderthals in relation to early Homo sapiens(our own species). This means that, as well as trying to balance decisions based on what archaeological evidence we actually have versus what else could have been going on, there’s a narrative requirement to try and help the audience understand them as different kinds of humans. That can be done visually through anatomy, costume and props, and also behaviorally: how the species move and communicate.

Clothing is a great example of how tricky this can be in practice. We know from distinctive polish left on their tools, and patterns of butchery marks on animal bones, that skins and furs were being processed by Neanderthals and by H. sapiens, but we’ve never found a permafrost body showing what they actually wore. The nearest thing are figurines carved with what look like hooded parkas, or in other cases nude bodies with belts, bracelets and what might be beaded hats. But these objects are many thousands of years later than the time period when humans overlapped with Neanderthals (they vanished around 40,000 years ago). So, when I consult on costume, I work with the designers to explore what the archaeology tells us, what might have been possible based on knowledge from ethnography, and how their production resources can make this something understandable for audiences.

One of the things that’s hard to get right in Neanderthal productions is their looks. Their facial anatomy was very different from ours, and even with excellent prosthetics, there’s only so much you can change. Digital methods are also possible, skewing faces into a more Neanderthal-like form, frame-by-frame. There’s always a risk of ‘uncanny valley’ effect, but what makes a huge difference is the actors. I always tell productions that Neanderthals had tough lives, but they were emotionally complex beings, just like us. One of my favorite things from IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE is the male character, Thorn, who’s an emotionally-rounded individual invested in his children, and also the actor who plays young Lark is so vivid, recognizable as nother kind of child, just playing with their baby sibling, or worried about a parent.

I love doing this work, and ultimately I see my role not merely in helping productions be more realistic or accurate, but also giving them access to more creative possibilities. We’re collectively trying to worldbuild and tell stories, and the power of humans to connect through time is what archaeological research, writing books and this film are all about. More from Sloan Science and Film:

• Excavating The Dig
• Director Interview: Gianfranco Rosi on BELOW THE CLOUDS
• Behind-the-Scenes of AMC’s The Terror

Most of the large forest animals on Pandora are hexapod, meaning they have six legs. The Pa’li, a horse-like herbivore that the Na’vi ride; the Palulukan, a huge apex predator that the Na’vi fear; the rhino-esque Angtsìk; and even the pterodactyl-like aerial ikran and toruk beasts have hexapod body plans. On Earth, insects have six legs, vertebrates have four, and spiders have eight. Evolution has consequently created very successful four, six, and eight limbed species on our home planet, and it is probably chance that all Earth vertebrates have four rather than six or eight limbs. The hexapod body plan of the animals of Pandora is consequently plausible. The problem is the Na’vi. They are apparently the only vertebrate species to have four limbs on Pandora.

On Earth, all vertebrates are related, sharing a common ancestor about half a billion years ago. Scientists think it was a small jawless fish-like animal. Assuming evolution works on Pandora as it does on Earth, the various species found there must have shared a common ancestor, and it seems likely it had a rudimentary hexapod body plan. The Na’vi then appear to have lost two limbs and the associated skeleton to support them, making them quadrupeds. Going from six limbs to four would require a major rework of the Pandoran vertebrate body plan, as the Na’vi have no obvious remnants of having had a six-limbed ancestor.

Limb loss is not impossible. There are animals like snakes without arms and legs, but on close examination it is clear they evolved from a quadruped ancestor. The same cannot be said of the Na’vi, as their body plan is quadrupedal. One possibility is the Na’vi separated from early Pandoran vertebrates very early in their evolutionary history, going on to develop a four-limbed body plan, with all other hexapods evolving from a common ancestor that evolved on another branch of the vertebrate tree of life to the Na’vi. Possible, but a bit of a stretch. Particularly given another widespread feature of life on Pandora.

All Pandoran animals, and even the Tree of Souls, have braid-type organs called tswins that they can use to bond with one another. The end of the tswin consists of exposed nerve cell endings that bind with that of another being, forming a neural link, called a tsaheylu, between the two organisms. When a Na’vi rides a Pa’li, Ikran, Toruk or ocean beast, they form a tsaheylu with that of the animal, a connection is made, and the two animals can communicate. The Na’vi can then direct movement of their mount without reins, can feel the animal’s emotional state and override their thought processes, at least to a degree. When the Na’vi bond with another, they experience some sort of emotional resonance and memory exchange.

For such bonding to work, it requires compatibility between neurotransmitters, nerve voltages, and brain structure across species that can bond. On Earth, differences between species in each of these would make bonding impossible. Even if the voltages of nerve signals and neurotransmitters were compatible, I suspect it would be rather undesirable to bond with a pet dog, horse, or squid. We have no idea what it would be like to be a bat, rat, or cat on Earth, and I suspect that is a good thing. It is also unclear why, or how, an adaptation where an individual of one species can take over motor control of another would arise, unless both would benefit in terms of survival and reproduction in everyday interactions. There are perhaps benefits to all life of Pandora in defeating the dastardly human villains intent on plundering the resources of this alien world, but evolution does not have foresight of what adaptations might be useful in the future. The neural bond must have provided all species with an advantage even in the absence of a human threat. Mutualisms, where two species evolve to benefit one another, do arise on Earth, but not to the extent that one animal hands over brain control to another.

The cases where brain function of one animal is altered by another organism on Earth are much more grotesque than on Pandora. Some species of fungi in the genus Ophiocordyceps are parasitic, and they turn some ants into “zombies”, modifying their behaviour. The fungus makes the ant climb to the end of vegetation before killing it. A fungal fruiting body then emerges from the back of the corpse’s head, bursting and spreading fungal spores over a larger area than they would infect if the ant had died on the ground.

We know little about the long-term consequences to Pandoran animals of bonding with the Na’vi. If the similarities in evolution between Earth and Pandora extend beyond shared aspects of their ecology, perhaps Na’vi are in fact a type of parasite, exploiting the animals that they bond with. If that is indeed the case, we would expect strong selection for the pa’li, ikran, and toruk to lose their tswins. Who knows, perhaps in AVATAR IV this will come to pass. Given the similarity in the story line between AVATAR II and AVATAR III, revealing that the Na’vi are parasites would be a welcome twist.

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Science & Film: I wanted to start by asking why you wanted to be in this film, and how the presence of the camera changes your work?

Steve Boyes: It's been since 2010 I had a French cameraman join me, and we went and filmed the first crossing of the Okavango, an ancestral route that hadn't been used for a generation. And ever since, we've had cameras with us. I'm a scientist, but I do understand that science needs narrative. It needs personality.

You know, you put a camera up, you set it up nicely, and you put the mic and we talk about the ancestors and we make it all about him around the fire and he tells some stories about his father and his grandfather and the migrations. He realizes that in telling it in that circumstance with a big camera, it's a really good story. And then you find him in the village later on, telling the same story. You build these storytellers. We do filmmaker expeditionary storytelling workshops across Africa now, six participants per workshop, we'll get between 1,000 and one and a half thousand applicants per workshop. We'll do them in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Botswana, Zambia, Tanzania, all over.

Eric Averdung, who was the cinematographer for GHOST ELEPHANTS, he's 25 years old. He came to Botswana to do a workshop with us. He was a safari guy teaching tourists how to use a DSLR camera. And we just found someone that had this extraordinary eye and work ethic, because you take them on a simulated expedition, they're doing character studies, storyboarding, gear, edits, and then color and sound grading and all that. And he just shone. So now he's the DOP on a Werner Herzog film 18 months after doing a workshop with us. So our legacy across Africa, with the great spine of Africa, the Okavango Wilderness Project, is, you know, not just the river guardians and the ecologists and the scientists and all of the bursaries and scholarships we do. It's also the storytellers telling stories about the river guardians, the scientists, the science, the discoveries, the risks, and the actions we need to take.

Kerllen Costa, Dr. Steve Boyes, and a group of Angolan tribal hunters check Steve's cellphone video of a ghost elephant at their search camp. (Credit: Ariel Leon Isacovitch)

S&F: That's amazing. One of the scenes that stood out to me is when the Ghost Elephant is captured on a cell phone and not one of the bigger cameras. Can you talk about shooting in the field and those choices?

SB: There's a couple other scenes, like the one when I'm drawing the footprint in the sand, that's on an iPhone. And Averdung intentionally wanted that, because he wants to be in it. When we're doing the trance dance, you know, he's uncomfortably in there, you know, inside the dance.

I mean, when we're out there, you're not allowed to say who's going with you, where you're going, or when you're going. So it was on the second day of the search documented by Averdung, which was two and a half, three months. And I went with my notepad, and then they banned me from walking and searching for two days. I went and camped away from camp. I sat off and like, it was punishment. And what you see in the film at the end there is, we've given up. We don't take any cameras.

When you go for a search, you come back to camp, no one talks to you for an hour, you decompress, and that is a cultural thing, and then we will do very dense and open and interactive sharing of what happens. And I remember getting back there, and I ate some rice and beans, and it was like, I was in a trance. I didn't know what to do. It was a powerful, powerful experience. I can't stop going back. I went back in September, and I had a helicopter--first time flying over because it's very difficult. And I just wanted to jump out there. There it is, I can see such a remote, mystical, magical valley. And I just wanted to kind of jump out and go down there. It's an extraordinary place, extraordinary.

I always say we're obsessed with Marvel superheroes and the thoughts of that, and we dream and imagine all of that a lot, you know. But our only superpower as human beings is being in nature and its effect on us. I used to have on expeditions, three spots for creative people, where it would be a data artist, conceptual artists, you know, photographers and filmmakers, sketch artists, painters, poets, writers, that kind of thing. And people from all walks of life and of all ages, and every single one of them, within a week, are reckoned super human in their system and way of being, because, you know, it's normal life for Antonio, it's normal life for Twee, to be on the bikes and go out and do this, and it's normal life for all of us. We all think, oh, gee, look at that. I've never met a person at any age that hasn't been able to do that. It seems so inaccessible. And that's what explorers do, but it is built into the resilience of being a human being. We experience it in brief moments in our city-based lives, but it's full on when you're out in those remote environments.

In the Smithsonian storage area, Director Werner Herzog claps the slate. (Credit: Skellig Rock, Inc)

S&F: What is it like to see an hour and a half depiction of such an intense experience? Were you involved in the edit at all?

SB: Werner is not really like that. I mean, I did sit in the edit suite that was going through initial footage. Within two days in Namibia, like he's so razor focused on the story you can't budge him, you can't give advice. He's not interested in listening to that. In the build up to that, I've shared poems and books and wrote a lot of five-page letters that are about my first experience of the elephants in the landscape, about the hunt for Henry. I had a team in Portugal do deep research into that whole thing. We went to the archive in Smithsonian, and I shared that with him. But once he's going it's very difficult to budge him on his vision. You come back to America. We're filming at Stanford and at the Smithsonian. He'll film for 45 minutes in the whole day with a giant crew. And the crew is like, can we do coverage? He's like, no, no, I'm done. We'd finished, we wrapped in UC Riverside and two weeks later, I get a link for the film. It's 95% the same as the film you see today. He did it in two weeks, because he knew what it was already.

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• Risking Life For The Okavango

The piece has been re-published below in its entirety.

The scientists who study primates are primates themselves. This point is made in the opening minute of Frederick Wiseman’s 1974 film PRIMATE.After the title appears on screen, we see photographs of scientists from the past, with varying amounts of facial hair, and then cut to live shots of some of the animals in captivity at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta, followed by a shot of two heavily bearded scientists observing gorillas who are cavorting behind bars. This sequence makes clear that while the researchers are obsessively studying the animals, Wiseman will train his camera and curiosity on the primates who happen to wear ties, clutch clipboards, and speak into tape recorders.

Juxtaposing the emotionally detached behavior of the researchers (who say things like “Let’s use 60 cycles to see if we can get the same ejaculate from John…remember at 20 cycles we’re getting better erections”) with the raw and sympathetic emotionalism of the gorillas, monkeys, and baboons, PRIMATE is, as Wiseman says “a rather bizarre comedy–I think it’s a riot.” But as the scientists perform their seemingly callous experiments, all for the sake of studying brain localization, sexual and aggressive behavior, and artificial insemination, the process is startlingly graphic and disturbing, including vivisection, vomiting, and–most excruciatingly–an extended scene detailing the decapitation of a monkey so that its freshly removed brain can be sliced and studied.

The eighth entry in Wiseman’s still-ongoing study of social institutions, PRIMATE was his most controversial film since his harrowing 1967 debut, TITICUT FOLLIES, which chronicled the abusive treatment of patients at a hospital for the criminally insane. Geoffrey Bourne, director of the Yerkes center, complained in a New York Times letter to the editor that “PRIMATE is a desecration of a noble institution and its dedicated staff.” Abruptly cancelling his scheduled appearance on a PBS panel discussion about the film, Bourne called PRIMATE “a perversion that doesn’t bear any relationship to reality.” In response, Wiseman pointed out that none of the film’s events were staged. Another critique, by sociologist and science ethicist Amitai Etzioni, published in the Times under the headline “PRIMATE is Unnecessarily Cruel to Scientists,” criticized Wiseman for not following the science experiments from the admittedly disturbing phase of “data collection” to its “processing, drawing of conclusions, to their interpretation and application.” Although Etzioni attacked Wiseman for not celebrating the benefits of research, we do hear one of leaders of the Yerkes center warning about threats to federal science funding from Washington by claiming that “all research is useful,” and citing the accidental discovery of penicillin as an example of “the usefulness of useless knowledge.” Animal-rights activists saw the film as a powerful statement against vivisection and other abusive forms of treatment. (In one scene, five scientists are gathered around a monkey who has a tube attached to his penis, so that he can be electrically coaxed to ejaculate).

Still from PRIMATE. Courtesy of Film at Lincoln Center.

Wiseman’s purpose here is not to be an advocate for scientific research or for animal rights. “Social reality is infinitely more complicated than ideology,” he has said. And although his filming method, which avoids narration, and allows the events he films to speak for themselves, bears some resemblance to the scientific method–gathering and sharing evidence–Wiseman has frequently made it clear that he is not looking for objectivity. He prefers the label “reality fictions” to “documentary,” and says that his results are “subjective, selective, and impressionistic.”

There is one very useful bit of biological science in the film, when a scientist explains the evolutionary fork in the road between the ancestors of apes and humans; the former had a lower center of gravity, bending towards the ground and walking with arms as well as feet. The ancestors of homo sapiens learned to stand, freeing their hands to make and use tools. The end result is on full display at Yerkes, which is as much a prison as a laboratory, with the animals as captives, and the humans prodding, controlling, measuring, and abusing their subjects with an enormous array of tools. The open-eyed, helpless, playful, anguished animals seem much more human than the scientists, who are beholden to their technology; Wiseman captures an endless array of gadgets and measuring instruments, including stop watches, tape recorders, hemoglobinometers, oscilloscopes, frequency generators, and more. In its vision of the soullessness of the technological age, PRIMATE would make for a perfect double feature with 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.In both films, the humans seem detached from feelings. HAL is the most emotional character in the Kubrick film, and the animals provide the emotional core of PRIMATE.

And therefore, it is the animals that the viewer relates to. And ultimately, this leads us to Wiseman’s real subject–you, the viewer. More than nearly any other filmmaker, Wiseman deliberately avoids explanation, giving us films that have the ambiguity and richness of real life, and asks us to interpret and make sense of what we are seeing. Now more than fifty years old, PRIMATE feels especially prescient, asking us to comprehend a world where we try to maintain our souls while we are, like the animals at Yerkes, being controlled by technology and endlessly mined for data.

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Highlights include TIME AND WATER, the latest from FIRE OF LOVE director Sara Dosa. The film is narrated by Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason, whose 2019 book On Time and Water inspired the film. Festivalgoers can also look forward to experimental filmmaker and visual artist Josef Gatti’s visually arresting PHENOMENA, which will have its world premiere at the festival. The feature film marks not only marking Gatti’s feature documentary debut, but the latest iteration of PHENOMENA, a project which initially garnered attention as a short-form YouTube series in 2021.

FEATURE FILMS:

AMERICAN DOCTOR. Dir. Poh Si Teng. “Poh Si Teng’s vérité feature follows three physician friends—Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian—from a besieged Gaza hospital to the halls of Congress, fighting to save lives.”

NUISANCE BEAR. Dirs. Gabriela Osio Vanden, Jack Weisman. “In Manitoba, we see the world through the perspective of a polar bear and question who deserves to be in the icy port town—the bears or the tourists?”

Still from NUISANCE BEAR. Courtesy of True/False.

PHENOMENA. Dir. Josef Gatti. World Premiere. “Partnering with his physics teacher father, the filmmaker embarks on a fantastical journey where the universe opens up in all its glory and magic.”

TIME AND WATER. Dir. Sara Dosa. “Illuminating a family’s shared memories with Iceland’s first melted glacier caused by climate change, Time and Water portrays a writer trying to preserve his connection to the natural world.”

Still from TIME AND WATER. Courtesy of True/False.

TO HOLD A MOUNTAIN. Dirs. Biljana Tutorov, Petar Glomazić.“In Montenegro’s remote highlands, shepherd Gara and her daughter Nada defend their ancestral mountain from a NATO training ground, driven by love for their land and way of life.”

SHORT FILMS:

BORN SECRET. Dir. Riley Fitchpatrick. “Having grown up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a filmmaker digs into the legacy of a town founded on the prospect of nuclear war.”

THE BOYS AND THE BEES. Dir. Arielle Knight. “A farm in Georgia paints a picture of pastoral idyll as little boys learn lessons in life and love from their beekeeping parents.”

Still from THE BOYS AND THE BEES. Courtesy of True/False.

BUCKSKIN. Dir. Mars Verrone. World Premiere. “A filmmaker looks to their grandfather, a forester inside academia and the U.S. Forest Service, asking how one life resists, survives, and protects community within institutions that reject you.”

GATORVILLE. Dir. Freddie Gluck. “As young siblings grow older, they contemplate a future that lies beyond the limits of their home—a tilapia farm turned into an alligator sanctuary.”

L’MINA. Dir. Randa Maroufi. “In Jerada, Morocco, retired miners pose for a portrait, then reenact the dangerous underground work that still continues—clandestinely—because no other livelihood exists.”

LAND OF COLD. Dir. Hervé Demers. World Premiere. “Immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa have chosen to start their lives over north of the 49th parallel. Here, in the vast expanses of Northern Canada, they reflect on the challenges and splendors of a season they’ve never yet experienced: winter.”

NO MEAN CITY. Dir. Ross McClean. U.S. Premiere. “The switch from sodium-vapor street lights to LED street lights reveals an Irish community holding onto tradition while technology changes daily life.”

• A Volcanic Love Story: Sara Dosa on FIRE OF LOVE
• Science Films at True/False 2025
• Clive Oppenheimer on Film, Volcanos, and Katia and Maurice Krafft

The 2025 jurors were Jonathan Bogarín (306 HOLLYWOOD), Dr. Gabriela Chiosis (The Gabriela Chiosis Lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center), Dr. Justus Kebschull (The Kebschull Lab at John Hopkins University), filmmaker Robert Kolodny (THE FEATHERWEIGHT), filmmaker Eliza McNitt (SPHERES), filmmaker Tasha Van Zandt (A LIFE ILLUMINATED), and Team ORCA founder Dr. Edie Widder. They selected the following filmmakers:

The winner of the 2025 Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize:

GOD MAKERS by Quinn Spicker (AFI)

Logline: In this true story for the battle over ChatGPT, academic researcher Helen Toner takes on tech-industrialist Sam Altman in an attempt to control the future of AI.

Jury Citation: “Keenly constructed and propulsively written, God Makers tackles a pivotal moment in human history. In anchoring the script in the perspective of a woman in STEM, Quinn Spicker has crafted a fresh, nuanced take on the story audiences think they know about Sam Altman, ChatGPT, and the future of artificial intelligence. The jury is delighted to award the Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize to GOD MAKERS.”

The jury also awarded honorable mention to Grand Jury Prize finalist Ellie Melick for her script SLEDHEAD.

SLEDHEAD by Ellie Melick (Carnegie Mellon University)

Logline: When her cousin — and hero — loses a long battle with mental illness, U.S.A. Skeleton athlete Ingrid Anderson puts her Olympic dreams on the line to help neurological researchers investigate how sliding sports damage the brain.

The winner of the 2025 Sloan Student Discovery Prize:

THE HEAD CASES by Nora Kaye (Brooklyn College)

Logline: Two brilliant, stubborn women—a rebellious young scientist and her exacting former professor—must overcome their mutual hatred to save the professor’s fading mind, testing their unorthodox Alzheimer’s treatment in a high stakes experiment that blurs the line between genius and recklessness.

Jury citation: “Balancing relatable emotional stakes with laugh-out-loud humor, THE HEAD CASES’s distinctive tone and sparkling dialogue make it an engrossing read. Nora Kaye’s charming two-hander explores the personal motivations and ethical challenges faced by scientists who devote their careers to combatting devastating diseases like Alzheimer’s. The jury is pleased to award the Sloan Student Discovery Prize to THE HEAD CASES”

Kaye is the first filmmaker from Brooklyn College to claim the prize since its inception in 2019.

The winners will be celebrated with an awards presentation, reception, and staged readings from their winning scripts at Museum of the Moving Image on April 9, 2026. The event is open to the public with RSVP.

• 2025 Sloan Student Prize Finalists and Mentors Announced
• 2023 Sloan Student Prize Winners Celebrated at MoMI
• Winners of the 2023 Sloan Student Prizes Announced

Highlights include a host of animated projects, many of which (Lena von Döhren’s short BATS & BUGS, Merlin Flügel’s short HOTEL OBLIQUE, Priscilla Kellen’s feature PAPAYA) will screen as part of Generation, the festival’s section designed to take the lives of young people seriously while fostering frank conversation between artists and audiences of all ages.

Fans of animation can also look forward to A NEW DAWN, which will make its world premiere in competition for the Gold and Silver Bears. It marks the directorial debut for Yoshitoshi Shinomiya, a Japanese animator and art director who has worked with anime masters such as Makoto Shinkai.

COMPETITION

A NEW DAWN. Dir. Yoshitoshi Shinomiya. World premiere. “Keitaro lives in a fireworks factory that is about to be shut down. He is determined to unravel the mystery of the Shuhari, a mythical firework created by his father before he disappeared without a trace – and launch it before the factory closes.”

DUST. Dir. Anke Blondé . World premiere. “At the end of the 1990s, during the height of the Belgian tech boom, visionary entrepreneurs Luc and Geert watch their empire collapse as news of their fraud breaks. With just one day of freedom left, they part ways in search of redemption.”

BERLINALE SHORTS

CHUURAA. Dir. Evgenia Arbugaeva. World premiere. “In the remote Siberian Arctic, an Indigenous Sakha scientist descends into the depths of the melting permafrost. Searching for an ancient creature, he makes his way through the dangerous, claustrophobic caves to the mythical realm of the Underworld.”

GRAFT VERSUS HOST. Dir. Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze. World premiere. “In this speculative video essay, the filmmaker connects his medical history with the shifts in post-Cold War geopolitics and their impact on contemporary politics.”

Stlll from GRAFT VERSUS HOST. Courtesy of Berlinale.

PERSPECTIVES

FOREST HIGH. Dir. Manon Coubia. World premiere. “In the northern Alps, Anne, Hélène and Suzanne take turns looking after a mountain hut. Through the seasons, hikers come and go. Stories bloom and fade, leaving each of them facing the silence of their chosen solitude and the poetry of nature.”

LIGHT PILLAR. Dir. Xu Zao. World premiere. “The future. Winter. Space travel is no longer a dream. A lonely janitor tends the grounds of a dilapidated bankrupt film studio with only a former cat actor for company until he embarks on a romantic journey with a female player in a beautiful virtual world.”

TRULY NAKED. Dir. Muriel d’Ansembourg. World premiere. “An introverted teen, who has only ever experienced sex through the lens while working for his father’s pornography business, must step out from behind the camera when a feisty classmate challenges him to embrace a real connection.”

GENERATION

BATS & BUGS. Dir. Lena von Döhren. World premiere. “When a streetlamp lights up on a country road in the jungle, a group of insects goes crazy – which proves to be handy for the hungry bats in a nearby cave.”

Stlll from BATS & BUGS. Courtesy of Berlinale.

HOTEL OBLIQUE. Dir. Merlin Flügel. World premiere. “A budgie finds itself in a luxurious wellness hotel that promises stressed birds peace and relaxation. But between the lulling sound of the fountains and soothing massages, it longs only to return to the safety of its cage.”

IMAGINARY NUMBERS. Dir. Jelica Jerinić. World premiere. “Mirna and her father take the bus from their village to the city of Niš for her to participate in the national mathematics competition. It is a big day: winning an award could gain her a place at a prestigious school and pave the way to a better future.”

PAPAYA. Dir. Priscilla Kellen. International premiere. “Papaya, a tiny seed in the Amazon rainforest who is passionate about flying, must keep moving to avoid taking root. But when she discovers the power of her roots, it triggers a revolution that transforms her world and fulfils her dreams in an unexpected way.”

SCORCHING. Dir. Wang Beidi. World premiere. “Li Yan’s life is as regimented as the production lines in the local poultry factory. Her grandmother is determined to get her a job there, but Li Yan refuses. Obsessed with the mystery of life and creation, she secretly attempts to hatch a stolen egg.”

FORUM

AI REALISM – QANTAR 2022. Dir. Almagul Menlibayeva. “Menlibayeva explores fake news, propaganda and the power and powerlessness of AI through a disturbing animated film on political violence in post-Soviet Kazakhstan that culminates in January 2022. From fragments towards a countermemory.”

I BUILT A ROCKET IMAGINING YOUR ARRIVAL. Dir. Janaína Marques. World premiere. “Fifty-something Rosa, lying in an MRI scanner, is prompted to summon a happy memory. She plunges into a meandering, subconscious road trip with her bubbly mother, where wild imagination becomes a tender, unruly form of therapy.”

MEGATRASHWANNABEBIGSTARXD. Dirs. Ava Leandra Kleber, Elisa Deutloff. World premiere. “What connects the clones of Paris Hilton and rapper Haftbefehl and why are people sick of performing on social media? We find out from Leandra’s questionnaire, which is answered by a chatbot fed by Elisa. How to appear online? Be a hottie! Frindz??!”

THE VALLEY WHERE LOAB LIVES. Dir. Georg Tiller. “A female character born from code, LOAB leads us through six iconic horror eras from Nosferatu to Get Out: a prompted being, cursed by design. Whoever knows her becomes part of the algorithm; whoever resists will be punished. An AI meta genre essay.”

FORUM EXPANDED

A CIRCLE AS THE CENTER OF THE WHOLE. Dir. Utkarsh. World premiere. “The city of Delhi is a site of constant excavation, formed by fragments of what is left behind. Archaeology becomes method and metaphor, revealing an absence in the ground around which the city forms.”

FANFICTIE: VOLCANOLOGY. Dir. Riar RIzaldi. International premiere. “Deep down in the bowels of a mountain, a Dutch geologist’s volcanic theories clash with local cosmologies in the Indonesian archipelago. Colonial science encounters the poetic, radical possibilities of reading nature otherwise.”

THE WEARY HOURS OF TWO LAB ASSISTANTS. Dir. Burak Çevik. World premiere. “Late at night, two lab assistants analyze an unknown substance. A coffee break turns into a fortune-telling session, shifting their gaze from science to intuition. They imagine a space where rational inquiry and foresight coexist.”

Stlll from THE WEARY HOURS OF TWO LAB ASSISTANTS. Courtesy of Berlinale.

KATABASIS. Dir. Martin Moolhuijsen. World premiere. “In a cave situated between the ridges of a human fingerprint, a primordial encounter with matter, light and sound unfolds.”

WARNINGS TO A DISTANT FUTURE. Dir. Juliane Jaschnow. World premiere. “How should those who come after us be warned of danger?” A film about the search for the German-German nuclear waste repository – between warning signs, feedback loops, flowing flocks of birds and the area between sign and object.”

• Science Films at the 2024 Berlinale
• Science Films at Berlinale 2025
• Preview of Science Films at the 2023 Berlinale

This follows the Sundance Institute’s announcement that Andrew Stanton’s feature film IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE won the 2026 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize. Selected by a jury of film and science professionals and presented to an outstanding feature film focusing on science or technology as a theme, or depicting a scientist, engineer, or mathematician as a major character, the Sloan Feature Film Prize includes a $25,000 cash award. The 2026 jury included previous winner Sophie Barthes, Dr. Heather Berlin, Dr. Andrea Ghez, Ari Handel, and Nicole Perlman.

In addition to the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, the Sundance Institute announced three grants for projects in active development. The winners were honored at a reception in Park City following Sloan-sponsored panel discussion, The Big Conversation: From Fire to Flight: Humans, Technology and Time, which Andrew Stanton joined.

Read more about all of the winning projects and the artists behind them below.

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Winner of the 2026 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize:

IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE
Andrew Stanton
Three storylines, spanning thousands of years, intersect and reflect on hope, connection, and the circle of life.

IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE will be released on Hulu on February 27, 2026.

Winner of the 2026 Sloan Episodic Fellowship:

SPEAK FOR THE DEAD: EXCITED DELIRIUM
Sonia Kennebeck. Tetiana Anderson
A brilliant young medical examiner hunts one of the worst serial killers in U.S. history as junk science almost derails the investigation into the murders of 32 women and girls. Inspired by the untold true story and life of the woman who became America’s first Black chief medical examiner.

Kennebeck and Anderson receive a $17,000 cash award as part of the fellowship, the first Sloan grant of her career.

Winner of the 2026 Sloan Development Fellowship:

STEM
Daeil Kim
A devoted scientist risks everything to win the approval of the world’s leading stem cell pioneer, only to be pulled into the dark secrets behind his “miracle cure” that claims it can end human disability.

Kim also received a $17,000 cash award as part of the fellowship. He previously won a 2024 Sloan Screenwriting grant at USC with STEM, formerly titled ETERNAL CELLS.

Winner of 2026 the Sloan Commissioning Grant:

CYBORG BEAST
Alan Fischer, Jonathan Cuchacovich
Based on a true story, a brilliant Latino student sacrifices everything to develop a groundbreaking prosthesis for children with disabilities, one that could either change the world or destroy his future.

Fischer and Cuchacovic receive $25,000 as part of the 2026 Sloan Commissioning Grant.

• Science Films at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival
• Science Films at Sundance 2026
• Science Films at Sundance 2025

Highlights include the Dutch premiere Ildikó Enyedi’s SILENT FRIEND, which was selected as the Alfred P. Sloan Science on Film Showcase at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. North American rights were snapped up by 1-2 Special within weeks of the film’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it received a lengthy standing ovation. Check out the trailer below.

CHRONOVISOR. Dirs. Kevin Walker, Jack Auen. World Premiere. “A French academic is seduced into a world of untold histories in her scholarly quest to uncover the mystery of a history-capturing camera-like machine created by clandestine Benedictine monks. An academic-noir, armchair mystery in the lineage of Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco.”

Still from CHRONOVISOR. Courtesy of IFFR.

ELEMENTS OF(F) BALANCE. Dir. Othmar Schmiderer. International Premiere. “Against the background of our increasingly threatened environment, which is facing immense ecological challenges, journey to ecosystems hardly ever seen before. How can ecological interdependence, co-creation, resilience and collaboration in nature lead us away from dystopian visions of the future?”

HUNGRY. Dir. Susanne Brandstaetter. World Premiere. “After mankind’s extinction, aliens arrive on Earth trying to understand the cause of this disaster by listening to specialists who had warned about the consequences of ruthlessly uncontrolled development. A documentary poem of great urgency as well as overwhelming beauty.”

KRAKATOA. Dir. Carlos Casas. World Premiere. “A Javanese fisherman experiences the greatest volcanic eruption of all time. Stranded on a deserted island, in search of food and water, he draws closer to the depths of the earth. A visceral and psychedelic odyssey.”

Still from KRAKATOA. Courtesy of IFFR.

SILENT FRIEND. Dir. Ildikó Enyedi. Dutch Premiere. “One ginkgo tree, three stories that unfold in its vicinity over more than a century. . . In 1908, Grete becomes her German university’s first female student. . . Some 60, 70 years on, Hannes cultivates a serious crush on Gundula. While taking care of her final thesis experiment for a few days, he begins a relationship of a most unexpected kind – with a geranium. Finally, in our recent past, during the COVID-19 lockdowns, neuroscientist Tony from Hong Kong finds himself trapped in the otherwise empty university . . .”

THERE WAS SUCH A THING BEFORE. Dir. Matsui Yoshihiko. International Premiere. “In this quiet, enigmatic drama, Matsui Yoshihiko reflects on the toll of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in the lives of its townspeople. Time has passed since Akira lost his mother. Now, he sets off to find his father who works to decontaminate the region.”

TYCOON. Dir. Charlotte Zhang. World Premiere. “Canadian visual artist Charlotte Zhang’s blistering experimental work proposes a claustrophobic and foreboding vision of Los Angeles on the brink of social explosion, as told through an impressionistic chain of events following the sudden disruption of the city’s meat supply.”

Still from TYCOON. Courtesy of IFFR.

THE WAVES SAGA. Dir. Badrul Munir. World Premiere. "What can folklore offer besides a glimpse into the beliefs and customs of a community? Reflecting on the geomythology of West Java, THE WAVES SAGA explores how scientific investigation into natural disasters finds vital insight in indigenous systems of knowledge.”

Still from THE WAVES SAGA. Courtesy of IFFR.

THE WOLF, THE FOX & THE LEOPARD. Dir. David Verbeek. Dutch Premiere. “Director David Verbeek presents a dark and unpredictable fairytale in which a girl raised by wolves finds herself in our modern society. With the world on fire and set for climate disaster, she learns what it is to be human.”

YELLOW CAKE. Dir. Tiago Melo. World Premiere. “When radical science backfires, miners and researchers confront apocalypse in Tiago Melo’s pulpy, politically charged sci-fi fusing local myth, dark humour, working-class grit and radioactivity in Brazil’s Northeast. An irresistible genre hybrid grounded in regional truths.”

• Science Films at IFFR 2025
• Science Films at IFFR 2024
• Science Films at IFFR 2023

Please note: This article contains spoilers.

THE HISTORY OF SOUND, a film directed by Oliver Hermanus, stars Paul Mescal as Lionel Worthing and Josh O’Connor as David White. Based on two short stories, “The History of Sound” and “Origin Stories,” by Ben Shattuck, who also wrote the screenplay, the film is not a “history,” but a beautiful and poignant period drama about the relationship between two men who bond over a love of song and spend the first month of 1919 collecting rural folk music in Maine with an early acoustical recorder.

The film opens in 1910, with a young boy wandering Kentucky’s backwoods and streams as the voice of his older self, played by Chris Cooper, recalls, “My father said it was a gift from God. I could see music. I could name the note my mother coughed every morning.” And it took on shape and color “yellow for D . . . taste, too. My father would play a B minor and my mouth went bitter.” We soon learn this is Lionel Worthing, and what he describes is synesthesia, the phenomenon of sensory crossover, allowing one to feel colors, or taste sounds. This quality of neurodivergence sets up Lionel’s character as remarkable, even though he assumed that “everyone could see sound.” His real gift, however, is his singing voice, noticed by the town’s music teacher, who arranges a scholarship to the fictional Northeastern Conservatory in Boston. There in a pub in 1917 he hears David White, a classmate at the Conservatory, playing an upright piano and singing a song familiar to Lionel, one his father played on the fiddle in an earlier scene, “Across the Rocky Mountains.” David insists that Lionel sing, and his a cappella “Silver Dagger” silences the room and stuns David with its purity. The two sing and drink until the wee hours, and stumble back to David’s apartment at dawn. Lionel stays the night and the two become lovers. Lionel learns David acquired his love of English folk ballads as an orphaned child, raised by his English uncle whose maid’s singing inspired him to ask around the village for more songs, which he compiled in a book.

Still from THE HISTORY OF SOUND. Courtesy of Mubi.

Folk song collecting became popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the rapid commercialization of popular music drove fascination with preserving a romanticized past. In 1877 Thomas Edison invented the device that transformed the practice. His tin-foil phonograph was the first device capable of both recording and reproducing sound, which he envisioned primarily as a business tool. After several improvements and the adoption of wax cylinders for recording, anthropologists and folklorists began using the phonograph and competing technologies to record the languages and folk music of indigenous peoples. In 1890, Jesse Walter Fewkes used an Edison cylinder recorder to document the songs, stories, and vocabulary of the Passamaquoddy people of Maine, and in 1907 Frances Densmore began recording the music of Native Americans for the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of Ethnology with a Columbia Graphophone. In England, Cecil Sharp, a prolific collector of folk song and dance, tried the phonograph but preferred written notation, while Percy Grainger collected over 350 folk songs on wax cylinders between 1906 and 1909. Clearly, the character of David White is a kindred spirit to these early ethnomusicologists.

In 1917, David is drafted into World War I; classes are suspended, and Lionel, whose eyesight exempts him from the draft, returns “regretfully” to his Kentucky home. Sensing his unhappiness, his mother (Molly Price) says, “just sing something” and tells him if he had never left, he would not now regret returning. Love in this family is impassable and stoic, like many of the songs and ballads we hear throughout the film. Their life is hard, but they enjoy simple pleasures, like the homemade Chinese lantern Lionel’s father (Raphael Sbarge) shows him. He lights the top of a paper cylinder and, as it burns down, the heat inside, less dense than the surrounding air, sends the flaming paper aloft as it burns out. This lighthearted scene portends both Lionel’s brief but intense romantic affair with David and the sudden death of his father, whom Lionel discovers slumped over a tree. Life is short, and lovers, like the lyric in “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies” can be “like a bright star of a summer’s morning, they first appear and then they’re gone.”

Late the following year, Lionel receives a letter from David, who has returned from the war. The letter begins, “My dearest silver-throated Confederate,” and tells Lionel to meet him in Maine where they can take long walks in the woods, camp out, and record the music of rural folk. Equipped with thirty-six wax cylinders and an Edison Standard Phonograph from the Music Department at Bowdoin College where David now teaches, they embark on the song collecting adventure that is the heart of the film. “I’ll teach you to use this. I’ll transcribe the lyrics,” David says. “What we’re looking for isn’t in towns. You’ll find it out there.” Out there they go into the “boreal wilderness,” to walk through woods, set campfires, sleep in a tent, and visit locals to record their songs.

During one such session with a mother and her children, as Lionel prepares the device, he describes to the children how the phonograph works. “See this?” pointing to the cylinder, “It’s made of wax, like your candle.” Incredulous, the boy asks, “How’s that catch sound?” Lionel explains that though sound is invisible, it can be physical, can touch something, can make an impression. Instructing the children to put their hands to their throats as they hum, he demonstrates the conduction of sound through the body, something Edison knew well. Because of his deafness, Edison had to “feel” sound by biting his piano and his music boxes. After the mother asks if she will feel anything, assured by David she will not, she sings a lilting “Grieved Soul” and is joined by her children in harmony.

Still from THE HISTORY OF SOUND. Courtesy of Mubi.

Toward the end of their collecting, David and Lionel travel by boat to Malaga Island, where David hopes to record the songs of the emancipated slaves and Irish immigrants who are about to be evicted by the state, an actual historical event that took place in 1912. “Poor immigrants and former slaves would make for strange old music, no?” David asks, to which Lionel replies, “Doesn’t make you feel uncomfortable?” David explains the salesmanship of collecting by making it an invitation, “lying if you want to call it that,” making it “easier for someone to be generous.” David convinces the initially reluctant schoolteacher to allow their recording by telling her they are collecting songs for a booklet to “preserve America’s heritage.” A powerfully sacred “Here in the Vineyard” sung by Thankful Mary Swain is among the most moving of the many traditional songs in the film, most of them arranged by, and some performed by, Sam Amidon.

The song collecting trip over, David and Lionel part ways at the Augusta train station, with a half-hearted promise by David to return next summer. Lionel’s monthly letters to David go unanswered. By 1923 he has moved to Rome where he sings with a male choir and takes a young male Italian cellist as lover, then to Oxford where he directs the men’s choir and acquires a posh English girlfriend. The relationships all end abruptly, by Lionel’s choice. Like the character in “Silver Dagger,” he leaves a chain of broken hearts. “My daddy was a handsome devil, he's got a chain five miles long. And on every link a heart does dangle, of another maid he's loved and wronged.” Unable to forget David, Lionel travels to Bowdoin College to find him. There he learns that David passed away during his second year of teaching in 1920, that there was no department sanctioned song collecting trip, and that David had a wife, Belle, who reveals that David took his own life.

A clever feature of THE HISTORY OF SOUND is how the songs, ballads, hymns, and even the drinking songs and dance reels often subtly reflect the mood, actions, and emotions of the characters. In 1927, seeking to cling to David even in death, Lionel makes a trek to the Lake District where David once told him he’d heard the best voice ever, “including yours.” Lionel loses his way, stays with a couple who tell him how far he is from his destination, and as he returns, we hear strains of “The Unquiet Grave,” with the lyric, “since I lost my one true love, what can I do but mourn?” David had once described the song to Lionel as a lament in where the singer tells their lover sitting on the grave to move on so they can be at peace and enjoy life while it lasts. “Go live your life.”

Next, we see Lionel, now a professor in his 80s, being interviewed on television about his recent book, Roots and Branches of American Ballads. Reflecting on what sparked his interest, he recalls being “never as happy as I was when collecting songs.” In reply to a student’s recent question about what he liked about folk songs, the ballads especially, “I found myself saying that they were the most warm-blooded pieces of music. . . . stories with sadness so great that they were turned to songs as if melody could make hardship lighter.” As he reads from his book, the scene cuts to Lionel at home inserting a cassette of Joy Division’s album Unknown Pleasures in his tape deck, and the opening bars of “Atmosphere” play under his reading, another apt choice of song. This post-punk band was known for moody, melancholy music, and the singer, like David, took his own life.

In the final scene, Lionel comes home to find a package on his doorstep, the battered leather suitcase of wax cylinders sent to him by a stranger who now lives in Belle’s old house and saw his television interview. Selecting the record marked October 1920 he inserts the cylinder on his home phonograph and, hearing David’s scratchy “Hello, Lionel” he slumps over, masterfully performing the line from the short story: “My heart hurt like it had been kicked.” Being able to listen to the voices of the dearly departed was one of Edison’s proposed uses for the phonograph.

One of the most engaging aspects of this film is Lionel’s lifelong internal struggle from the time he found his soulmate in David. Their bond extended beyond a physical attraction, and included the shared love of music, of sound, of all the sounds he so longed to have been able to record. “I want the sound of my life,” Lionel declared. “What happens to all the sounds released into the world never captured? I want all of it. The History of Sound.”

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S&F: You have some great footage and audio of Joybubbles throughout the film. How did you discover that?

Rachael Morrison: The first thing I discovered, because it's online, are 72 recordings of one of his Fun lines. And then as I started to go out and interview people, I met this woman, Cynthia, who's in the film--you might remember her, she has a frog on her shirt. She had recorded him telling his entire life story, like up until the 80s, when she first met him. She was going to write a book about him, but she never did. So she gave me these tapes, and it was at that moment that I realized, okay, this is going to be great, because he can tell his entire life story in this film. And then I found some recordings that someone gave me of two different speeches that he had given, one in Memphis and one in Denver, and then a family member found some recordings in a storage unit. So it's really a collage of all of those things.

Will Butler: So often, people with disabilities, frankly, don't get to tell their own story. And so, I think Rachael's vision for this was really to have him be the narrator of his own story. And that's not easy to do when someone has passed away, so unearthing those recordings, those very intimate, personal recordings was, I think, the key to all of this.

S&F: One of the things that stood out to me was, I think early on, when he talks about collecting crickets. I was just thinking of the sounds crickets make, and his ability to whistle.

RM: That's an interesting little moment where, you know, his sister is talking about crickets chirping outside when they're free and independent, and then when they bring the cricket home and it's stuck in this jar, it's not singing anymore. And that felt like a metaphor for him in that moment in his life, like feeling kind of stuck, and then later on, almost literally singing his way into independence by whistling.

S&F: Yeah. The trajectory of the film and his life is interesting too, because it almost seems like he regressed a little bit later in his life. In the end, he lived this very unexpected life. Had either of you heard of him before working on this project?

RM: I had not. I discovered him, unfortunately, when he passed away and The New York Times ran an obituary about him. That's when I first discovered him. And I didn't know about the phone phreaks. I didn't know people were hacking into the analog telephone system. I knew about computer hackers, but I had no idea there was this whole other history beforehand. He was really one of the first hackers to hack into a network. So I just found that to be unbelievably fascinating.

WB: There's this rich history of blind people being on the forefront of technology. Whether you talk about like the very earliest, you know, audio books to early synthetic voices, blind people have sort of always been active in this space, so I wasn't surprised by his story. But I think what's surprising is how influential he was, and that no one has written that. We're grateful to be contributing a chapter to that history, I think. And yeah, without giving too much away, I think his decision to embrace his childlike qualities is complicated, because I think like on one hand, people with disabilities are so often infantilized, right? But I think also we feel pressure to act like adults too. So I think actively reclaiming your childhood is sort of a radical act, and I think it's something that a lot of people wish they could do. Maybe it was a response to being told by society that he wasn't welcome, or maybe, you know, it was just him embracing his true nature. But I think it was like either way, it was a brave and sort of bold thing for him to do, especially during that time.

JOYBUBBLES

RM: And it was in response to trauma that he experienced as a kid, and trying to come to terms with that.

S&F: I imagine there were a lot of moments in the making of this film where you're listening to him tell his story, and you wanted to ask a follow up. You do a beautiful job interweaving his narrative with interviews. Is that how you dealt with not being able to communicate with him?

RM: I think it was getting to know him through the cassette tapes, and he's very open and honest about himself and his life, and then, yeah, like additional questions that I had, if they were appropriate, that's why I spoke with other people. But I think mostly they kind of come in to serve a function of adding to the history of tech, the history of hacking, talk about phone phreaking, and then in the second half of his life, it's sort of like realizing, there are all these people that didn't really know him, but they called his Fun line, and that made a really big impact in their lives. They still remembered him decades later, just from calling the Fun line. I just wanted to show that he really reached a lot of people.

WB: It's easy to romanticize the older tech too. But I still think that there're kids discovering technology for the first time today, who are probably having similar experiences. [He was] a boy who felt quite powerless, realizing that he was actually very powerful. And it doesn't really stop there. I think at first, you might think his superpower is his ability to whistle, but actually, that's just kind of a simple thing he does and I think really, where he shines and where his superpower really is, is like, his ability to consistently connect with people, and consistently make people happy, right? There was so much great footage of him talking, because he was, like, this prototypical like influencer or content creator, or podcaster. He had all these followers. But he wasn't like a brand or like a media company. He was just a guy who wanted to spread a positive message. That was so advanced for that time. I did feel like we were always in dialog with him.

S&F: How much did you think about the way technology has changed since Joybubbles's time?

RM: He wasn't just a phone phreaker. He was hacking the system and hacking his life, like his whole life. I love to think about his Fun line as being like a proto podcast, but also kind of hacking broadcasting. He didn't need to be on the radio. He made his own radio station with his phone. I mean, one of the funniest things I realized was that I needed someone to explain what a telephone book was, because people who watch this and experience this, a lot of them might not know. I asked David, can you explain what a phone book was?

S&F: How connected was he to the blind community, do you know?

RM: Oh, for sure. I think about half the people who I interviewed are blind. And he was pretty involved in the community in Minneapolis. Quite a few phone phreaks were blind. I interviewed Bill Acker, if you remember, he was a phone freak, he's blind, and he met Joybubbles in, like, the 60s, and they were friends for a couple of decades.

S&F: Will, I'm curious for you, what drew you to this project?

WB: I'm blind. I just don't think there are enough nuanced, complex stories of blindness out there. There's very few, really and very few stories that get beyond the trope of victim or a villain or a superhero. There are as many different types of blind people in the world as there are different types of people in the world. And Joybubbles was super complicated, just like everyone else. And so, Rachel is totally on board with telling a complex, multi-faceted story of a character who was none of those things and all of those things. And so to get a chance to be on a team to that that was doing that was awesome. And the fact that Sundance was the first to embrace the film is even more awesome. And so we're just really excited to add to the canon of good disability stories. And we hope that the various communities that this touches feel the same way.

S&F: Lastly--and this might be a conflict of interest--I want to ask about the score and how you how you guys thought about music?

RM: Yeah, that was Will Epstein.

WB: Wait, is there an Epstein conflict?

S&F: He's my brother.

WB: My gosh, amazing. No way.

RM: I love your brother. I'm so excited to meet him. He was the perfect person to score this movie. Taylor Rowley is a really good friend of mine. She's the music supervisor, and she knew his work. I don't think she knew him beforehand, but she knew his work. We love his score for the Nam June Paik documentary.

S&F: The film has to do in part with whistling and perfect pitch--it has its own music in it. Was there anything you took inspiration from there or wanted to stay away from with the score?

RM: Yeah, I mean, Will is highly collaborative, and we had a lot of meetings with the editor, and Taylor, and myself. It was sort of the four of us, you know, giving notes and collaborating, and Will sent us all sorts of different ideas. I think it's really beautiful, he sort of subtly put whistling into the tracks without it being just so obvious. I think his taste and style just really fit the film. And the song, "Bubble Joy." I mean, I can't believe Taylor found that. It was this weird record, like sort of a Christian record from the 60s or 70s. She found it a couple years ago, and we were just like, what is this, this is going in the movie.

♦

• Dag Spicer on STEVE JOBS
• David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg on WE ARE AS GODS
• Science Films at Sundance 2026

On January 26, Andrew Stanton and Colby Day will also participate in The Big Talk, a special discussion moderated by science communicator, neuroscientist and clinical psychologist Dr. Heather Berlin.

Sloan Science & Film will be covering Sundance, so check back for more as the festival gets underway.

U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

JOYBUBBLES. Dir. Rachael J. Morrison. World Premiere. “Joybubbles discovers he can manipulate the telephone system by whistling a magic tone. Born blind and yearning for connection, his early obsession unwittingly lays the groundwork for a subculture that shapes the future of hacking and technology.” Available online for public.

THE LAKE. Dir. Abby Ellis. World Premiere. “An environmental nuclear bomb looms in Utah. Two intrepid scientists and a political insider race the clock to save their home from unprecedented catastrophe.” Available online for public.

NUISANCE BEAR. Dirs. Gabriela Osio Vanden, Jack Weisman. World Premiere. “A polar bear is forced to navigate a human world of tourists, wildlife officers, and hunters as its ancient migration collides with modern life. When a sacred predator is branded a nuisance, it becomes unclear who truly belongs in this shared landscape.” Available online for public.

Still from NUISANCE BEAR. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival.

PUBLIC ACCESS. Dir. David Shadrack Smith. World Premiere. “An unprecedented look inside one of the greatest media experiments to hijack American screens. Rare archives from New York’s underground capture a world of creators who shattered rules, defied censors, and transformed our televisions into a free-speech battleground where anyone could be a star.” Available online for public.

WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

SENTIENT. Dir. Tony Jones. World Premiere. “An investigation into laboratory research on animals exposes a hidden world in which it’s not just the animals getting hurt. The story of Dr. Lisa Jones Engel, a primatologist turned animal welfare advocate, asks whether harming animals and ourselves in science’s name is justified.” Available online for public.

NEXT

GHOST IN THE MACHINE. Dir. Valerie Veatch. World Premiere. “The untold origins of artificial intelligence lie not in machines but in power, revealing the fantasies behind the hype that got us here and where we go next.” Available online for public.

Still from GHOST IN THE MACHINE. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival.

PREMIERES

THE AI DOC: OR HOW I BECAME AN APOCALOPTIMIST. Dirs. Daniel Roher, Charlie Tyrell. World Premiere. “A father-to-be tries to figure out what is happening with the AI insanity, exploring the existential dangers and stunning promise of this technology that humanity has created.”

IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE. Dir. Andrew Stanton. World Premiere. “Three storylines, spanning thousands of years, intersect and reflect on hope, connection, and the circle of life.” 2026 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize Winner.

TIME AND WATER. Dir. Sara Dosa. World Premiere. “Facing the death of his country’s glaciers and the loss of his beloved grandparents, Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason turns his archives into a time capsule to hold what is slipping away — family, memory, time, and water.” Available online for public.

Still from TIME AND WATER. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival.

SHORT FILM PROGRAM

STILL STANDING. Dirs. Victor Tadashi Suárez, Livia Albeck-Ripka. “On January 7, 2025, the Eaton fire destroyed over 9,000 structures in Altadena, California. Thousands more were left standing but contaminated with toxic ash. Residents face the impossible decision of whether they should risk their health to return home.”

Still from STILL STANDING. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival.

TUKTUIT : CARIBOU. Dir. Lindsay Aksarniq McIntyre. “An exploration of the close and enduring connections between Inuit, caribou, lichens, and land use. A handmade caribou gelatin emulsion reveals the land where caribou struggle to survive burn events and habitat disruption.”

• 2023 Sloan Winners at Columbia University and SFFILM
• 2023 Sloan Student Prize Finalists and Mentors Announced
• Film Independent Announces 2025 Alfred P. Sloan Episodic Fellow

Winners of the 2025 USC Sloan Screenwriting Grants:

THE GAME by Rita Pereyra
Mariana cleans a games studio every night. She and her precocious young daughter live in a cramped apartment, takes care of her disabled father, and has no future prospects. She does have a unique skill: performing complex mathematical computations in her head which is observed by a game designer who encourages her to learn computer science at the local community college and then apply for a junior level position at his company. Initially reluctant, suspicious and faced with family crises, Mariana ultimately succeeds.

SEVEN MILES DOWN by Jesse Werkman
In the wreckage of postwar Europe, a disillusioned economics professor is drawn back into his father’s quest to build the first submersible capable of diving to the bottom of the sea, where he must rediscover the power of progress and exploration in a fractured world.

Winners of the 2025 USC Sloan Production Grants:

BREAKTHROUGH by Jacob Piller
Based on true events of Charles Banting, a physician who after WWI worked on a new serum to treat diabetes and his personal journey and ambition that drove him to the edge of moral collapse. Throughout his research, Banting refused help until his boss assigned another scientist to work with him who successfully purified the new insulin extract to use on a boy dying from acute diabetes. Banting and the co-scientist received the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

DEFIANT ONES by Candace Williamson
After seeing WWII injured soldiers in hospitals trying to regain their independence, Bessie Blount, a Black physiotherapist invents a device to allow seriously wounded and amputees to eat food without physical assistance. The hospital dismisses her efforts even after she creates a working prototype, and she goes on a local tv show to try to get funding. The story ends abruptly before she does become successful as a forensic handwriting expert assisting police and later as the Chief Medical Examiner for the Virginia police department.

• 2025 Sloan Student Prize Finalists and Mentors Announced
• Meet the Filmmaker: Brittany Wang on THIN ICE
• Meet the Filmmaker: Justine Beed on LA FORZA

This is the fifth year that the Sloan Student Prizes are administered by Museum of the Moving Image, as part of the Museum’s wider Sloan Science & Film initiative. Both the Sloan Student Grand Jury and Discovery Prizes come with a cash award of $20,000 and year-round, dedicated mentorship from a scientist and film industry professional.

Established in 2011, the Grand Jury Prize includes finalists from each of six universities the Sloan Foundation has a longstanding relationship with: American Film Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, New York University, University of Southern California, and UCLA. The 2024 winner Brittany Wang also earned the 2025 Sloan Commissioning Grant at Sundance.

In 2019, the Sloan film program expanded with the creation of the Discovery Prize, which recognizes finalists from six public universities not regularly affiliated with the Foundation. Once nominated, Discovery finalists work with writing mentors to refine their screenplays. This year’s mentors include filmmaker and academic Jon K. Jones (LET THERE BE LIGHT), filmmaker Shawn Snyder (TO DUST), and writer/filmmaker Drew Burnett Gregory. Snyder’s TO DUST won the Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize in 2016 where it was discovered and later produced by juror Emily Mortimer.

The winners, selected by a jury of scientists and film industry professionals, will be celebrated at MoMI in 2026 with an awards ceremony and work-in-progress readings.

See below for more about the 2025 finalists and writing mentors.

The Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize 2025 finalists:
The finalists are nominated by six graduate film programs that have year-round partnerships with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to award screenplay grants for science-themed narratives.

GOD MAKERS by Quinn Spicker (Feature)
American Film Institute

SLEDHEAD by Ellie Melick (Feature)
Carnegie Mellon University

NO DAY SHALL ERASE YOU by Edy Kennedy (Series)
Columbia University

REJECTION by Gabriel Henneman (Feature)
New York University

THE INVISIBLE CITY by Matthew Evans (Feature)
University of California, Los Angeles

SEVEN MILES DOWN by Jesse Werkman (Series)
University of Southern California

The Sloan Student Discovery Prize 2025 Finalists:
The finalists are nominated by film programs without year-round screenplay development partnerships with the Sloan Foundation.

THE HEAD CASES by Nora Kaye (Feature)
Brooklyn College

AQUA VITAE by Gabriella Peters (Feature)
Florida State University

BETTER JUDGEMENT by Chelsea Hall (Feature)
Temple University

BELOVED BY GOD By Derek Swift Weinstock (Feature)
University of Michigan

• 2023 Sloan Winners at Columbia University and SFFILM
• 2023 Sloan Student Prize Finalists and Mentors Announced
• Film Independent Announces 2025 Alfred P. Sloan Episodic Fellow

The winner of the 2025 Sloan Science Prize in Documentary is Jeremy Fielding (@Jeremy_Fielding) for his developing project THE ENGINEERING OF A PHOTOGRAPH. Fielding’s YouTube channel hosts a library of videos in which he instructs viewers on how to re-create various mechanical projects, each of which illuminate fascinating concepts in engineering.

The winner of the 2025 Sloan Science Prize in Narrative Fiction is Toby Hendy, for her work A GUIDE TO MAKING FRIENDS IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION, inspired by her debut book of the same title. Self-published earlier this year and featuring color illustrations by Martina Pepiciello, the non-fiction guide takes a whimsical approach in its aim: to encourage novices and mathletes alike to embrace mathematical thinking and inspire interest in theoretical physics. Hendy’s YouTube channel Tibees (@tibees) – which has over 1.3 million subscribers – also explores the history of science and topics in physics, math, and astronomy throughout hundreds of videos.

Hendy and Fielding at IMI Fest 2025. Courtesy of IMI.

Fielding and Hendy’s works were selected by a jury which included YouTube creator Destin Sandlin, screenwriter/producer Nicole Perlman, YouTube creator Sabrina Cruz, theoretical physicist Stephon Alexander of Brown University, and IMI co-founder Elaine Sevier.

This marks the second year of the partnership between IMI and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The inaugural winner of the Sloan Science Prize in Documentary, Xyla Foxlin, published her winning project BUILDING AN AIRPLANE FROM SCRATCH in two parts earlier this year. Check out Part 1 below before streaming Part 2 here on her YouTube channel @xylafoxlin.

More from Sloan Science and Film:

• Isaac Newton on SciShow
• Guardians Of The Galaxy's Nicole Perlman’s Directorial Debut
• Science and Superheroes: Interview with Nicole Perlman

Science & Film: How did you guys come to this story?

Jesse Moss: We came to the story about five years ago. There was a profile of Fred in The Guardian that we saw. From there, we went to Fred's blog, which has his kind of lonely struggle to keep the story alive. And from there, we were connected to Fred by a producer that we know, and learned that Fred was interested in having a documentary made. The breakthrough for us was meeting Fred for the first time, just having a conversation with him. He has a kind of ethereal, magical quality to him, which I think you see in the footage. He's just a remarkable person, and we were eager to make a film about somebody who made us feel hopeful in a challenging time.

We connected very personally with this story, because we also came of age in that time period. We're just a little bit older than the kids [in the film], but we also picked up a camera in the early 90s and discovered how powerful a tool camcorders could be. We also were looking for a way to talk about some of the the issues around climate change and our environment, but in a way that felt unexpected and fresh. It's very hard to get people to pay attention to these existential threats. Telling them how big the problems are is not really the way to do it, and this story reduces the problem to a finite point that we could really grasp.

Amanda McBaine: I'm also going to add that when we visited Fred for the first time, he took us down to his basement, and in his basement was 500 hours of archival material, which is a documentarians dream, but he'd also organized it well. All these VHS tapes which would have corroded and are currently all corroding, he'd transferred over to digital. So he's a great steward of his own history, but then was open to a remix with us.

Directors Amanda McBaine & Jesse Moss. Credit: Whitney Curtis

S&F: In terms of Fred's arc, do you see a tension between his wanting pursue this issue in a journalistic fashion and being a teacher?

JM: Fred is, in some ways, a kind of contradiction, and that makes him really interesting. He's a radical, but he's also a teacher in a system and an institution. And we were quite taken with understanding how Fred was radicalized. It was the late 60s and the anti-war movement. Unlike most people of that generation, he didn't lose his radicalism. He became a teacher, but he brought his radicalism not in a preaching way, but in a kind of way to empower. I think he created an extraordinary space, and somewhat by accident. And so the school system thought, well, he's an expert in technology, but he didn't really know anything about it.

I think that the film also gets at the tension between journalism and activism, which is also unresolvable. And I think a great question to wrestle with for audiences. I think personally that journalists are not impartial. I think we're all human. We're journalists, and we have a point of view. And I think being aware of that point of view is important, but also letting your students step forward and discover for themselves what the story is, is really what he did, fundamentally, and I think what we admired so much.

AM: It's important to remind ourselves and you that his class had a lot of kids in it that didn't participate in this particular documentary. They were given a choice, and so it was the kids who gravitated towards this work, this kind of investigative journalism piece. That's the kids who we followed. So I think his learn by doing style of teaching is so effective. We have two teenagers now, one's in college. It's so meaningful and empowering, as Jesse mentioned. I never felt, at least in what I saw and heard from Fred, like kids had to follow whatever his thesis was. That is not him at all. In fact, I think that's anathema to him, because he knows how much teaching was top down.

JM: I think particularly now, that's a value and a way of motivating young people that we wanted to put out into the world and encourage. I mean, schools are different now than they were then, and what you can get away with is probably different, but I hope that the film inspires students and educators to think about how the classroom is used to engage the wider world–not just through books and texts, but through experiential learning.

S&F: I think you guys rebuilt the classroom for the film. Can you talk a little bit about what the effect was of rebuilding it?

JM: Fred puts it profoundly that the classroom is a quorum he calls it. It's a space for imagination and creativity that gives rise to new things. And a classroom is really a stage. We built a classroom, but I think it's also a real classroom, and became one when we brought Fred and these students, now adults, back into that space, and it became both a portal to the past and unlocked memories and emotions that were important for us to bring to life and tell the story. We asked permission and that was important, particularly from Fred. The inspiration came when he drew the classroom. We knew it didn't exist anymore. Fred drew it, and I think that was the kernel of an idea to say, what if we could bring it back to life as a way of paying tribute to what it represented. And so we, with his permission, reconstituted it as faithfully as we could. Everything worked, all the equipment, all the cameras, which was fun, but I think more importantly, it became an active and alive space and that's what we wanted to infuse the film with.

Still from TEENAGE WASTELAND

S&F: In interviewing the students, what did you find was the main thing that had stayed with them from that time?

AM: One of the reasons that we were attracted to this project is because it's such an interesting thing to revisit now, as a middle-aged person, parenting teenagers looking back on, what you do carry forward from high school and what have you buried? What you remember from high school too, like the weirdest stuff, like visually, emotionally, all of the people that we featured in our film had pretty major stuff going on in high school outside of the classroom. That's one of the reasons they needed this clubhouse, right? They needed a father figure, basically, and they needed a project. And they needed a group. They needed, like, a family. And this project had meaning, because everybody as a teenager is looking for meaning. But also, Fred is somebody they really remember, and some of them are still in touch with him, because he was so meaningful to them, to have an adult figure who was such a good force and such an unjudgmental constant for them who also forced them to be their better selves at all times.

I think it's a challenging role, too, that Fred took on, which is to expose young people to the ills of the world in a responsible way. They were confronting corruption and darkness and danger and that's coming of age.

I think for Middletown, the story set in a small town is a story that's much bigger [than its setting]. And I think for us as storytellers, that containment is what made it powerful. The fact that it was small makes it big, I think. And that's what we hope, that whether it's a story of taking political action in your small town and recognizing that democracy is not just over here in Washington DC, but right here in your community, it depends on your own actions. These were things that just felt powerfully resonant right now, and that's our hope, that the movie lands in a moment that resonates and short circuits people's defense mechanisms.

You know, also, no one ever wants to talk about garbage, and it's such a big deal, and we make so much of it. We're not the kind of filmmakers are gonna put a text card at the front explaining how front explaining how many tons of garbage gets created every year, and that's just household garbage, not to mention industrial way. To us, to have made this film that's entertaining, that's character driven, but really this is about garbage on some level too. So you're going to have to think about it for at least an hour and a half. How much do you create and how much are you doing about it? How much do you know about where it goes because it doesn't disappear magically.

I don't like to hit people over their head. I don't think that's what documentary is about. I think it's about meeting people like Fred and these kids. So that's really what we're delivering people for an hour and a half, is like, see these people like you, sort of unknown people who do extraordinary things.

♦

• Radu Ciorniciuc And Vali Enache On ACASĂ, MY HOME
• Director Interview: Mounia Akl on COSTA BRAVA, LEBANON
• Climate Refugees: NEWTOK

Film Independent is a longstanding film partner of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and together the organizations have supported filmmakers in a myriad of ways, including annual fellowships and grants.

On the eve of this year’s market, Deadline published an exclusive announcement about the market’s 2025 participants, revealing the two filmmakers awarded the year’s Sloan Fast Track Grant and Sloan Distribution Grant, respectively. Read more about the promising new works to receive game-changing support from the Alfred P. Sloan foundation below.

The Winner of the 2025 Film Independent Alfred P. Sloan Fast Track Grant:

KILLING JAR by Etzu Shaw
Logline: Burdened by guilt after her mother’s abrupt death, an insect researcher decides to undertake her own forensic entomology investigation to uncover the truth.

This is writer/director Shaw’s third grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The foundation previously awarded KILLING JAR a screenwriting grant at Columbia University and the Science in Cinema Filmmaker Fellowship at SFFFILM in 2023. The script was also a finalist for the 2023 Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize.

The Winner of the 2025 Film Independent Alfred P. Sloan Distribution Grant:

HUMANS IN THE LOOP by Aranya Sahay
Logline: An indigenous woman works as an AI data-labeler after returning to her village with her children, but soon questions the human bias in machine learning.

HUMANS IN THE LOOP is currently available to stream on Netflix. Watch the trailer below.

• 2023 Sloan Winners at Columbia University and SFFILM
• 2023 Sloan Student Prize Finalists and Mentors Announced
• Film Independent Announces 2025 Alfred P. Sloan Episodic Fellow

Science & Film: Do you consider the film like a call to action?

Ben Kalina: It's definitely a call to action, but it's not a call to action on solar geoengineering, per se. It's a call to move into a new mindset around climate change and how we respond to it. And it's about saying that, you know, 20 years after AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, I think the really inconvenient truth now is that we did not move quickly enough to cut emissions to avoid some harrowing climate change and global temperature rise. So while cutting missions is still fundamentally the most important and truly the only important thing we can do, we have to start looking at some other ideas. We've kind of missed the opportunity to do the simple thing, and now we have to figure out what it means to think through some complex choices. So to me, it's a call to action on sobriety, but it's also a little bit saying, like, look, there's still hope. We are not done. We still have things we can do, but we have to really be thoughtful and serious about it.

S&F: Can you tell me a little bit about wanting to have these two main characters, or two actors–one being the for-profit group and the other being David Keith.

BK: There's a lot of, like, really tricky narrative work in this film to make things as clear as we can without going too deep into the weeds. And, you know, just to be clear, David did have a financial stake in a company that he founded, which he sold, but it was outside of the realm of solar geoengineering research. It was in carbon removal. And so I think it is important to know that David has had dealings in the for profit world. It's part of the complexity of the story.

The film, for a long time, was focused on David and Frank's research at Harvard on Scopex. That was the narrative thread of the film and the arc that we sort of settled on after several years of poking around once they announced they were going to do this project. To me, it was clear that this project would be a really great way of getting at so many of the questions around the research into solar geoengineering: the ethics of it, all the questions and moral hazard and just how it lands in the world, and what it means to start thinking about this idea of changing the Earth's reflectivity. And so I followed that for a long time. As you see in the film it plays out over six or seven years since the first announcement of the project. And so we really hung with it and found our moments. Towards the end of the film, as sometimes happens in these kinds of projects, it was late 2022 and I heard about Make Sunsets popping up on the scene. The instant I saw them I knew that this potentially could be a really interesting kind of foil to David's story, in the sense that David is this very cautious, very thoughtful, and sort of more mainstream scientific researcher working within a lot more guard rails.

Basically, David's operating within the guidelines that are set out by federal research and academic research, and is just very cautious, because he's really careful about trying to manage the ways that people are understanding what he's doing, but he's also trying to put the idea out into the world. So it's this very slow process. And at the same time, you've got for profit entities that are popping up, like Make Sunsets and now others like Stardust and Sunscreen, who are for profit entities looking to enter this space. They're doing so in part because I think they see that the academic research is taking too long. Make Sunsets are almost like caricatures of tech bros. Just like, move fast, break things. It was an obvious way to kind of jump into this story, to find the contrast between what Dave is attempting to do in order to move this research forward, and how this specific Silicon Valley disruptive force might enter this scene. There's all the ways in which they're just actually kind of hilarious and fun, and they bring humor into the story. They do a lot of things that films like this don't normally get to do. I think it's really important for people to have fun. But the other thing about them is that they're not, in my mind, they're not really in this to make money. They are more like provocateurs. They're circus performers trying to get attention, because they really feel that this research needs to move forward more quickly. The research of people like David and others needs to continue to move forward, and they see their role as really provoking people to think more seriously about it.

And so there are a lot of reasons why it made sense to me to include them in this film. The other reason is just that, like, while they may be kind of funny and relatively harmless, there are other entities out there that are starting to get... I mean, Stardust just got $60 million in funding to do their work, and they are much more ambitious. I think that the role of for profit investment in this space is extremely problematic.

David Keith

S&F: How long did the film take you to make?

BK: I picked up a camera at this conference at Asilomar in 2010 and filmed with David a little bit there, and then pursued some different directions. I filmed at the climate engineering conference in 2014 in Berlin, filmed for 10 days at COP 21. All of that was kind of experimental production until Scopex took off, and that's when I decided to make that the central narrative for us.

S&F: At what point did you decide that David would be your central character?

BK: I started looking into the ocean iron fertilization project that happened off of Haida Gwaii in 2012. Ocean iron fertilization is often mentioned in this bucket of geoengineering. It's a carbon removal idea, as opposed to being about reflectivity. But to me, it held a lot of the same kind of intrigue in the sense that it was rogue: a very risky intervention in terms of global climate-related technology. But it just didn't go where I wanted it to go, and it didn't feel to me like it had the kind of ingredients that this idea of solar geoengineering did, and so I kind of put it on the shelf for a while and continued poking around until Scopex surfaced.

S&F: And can you say any more about what ingredients you felt the film had to have?

BK: I was very inspired by John McPhee's book The Control of Nature. It really inspired my first feature, SHORED UP, which is about beach replenishment and coastal development on barrier islands. He writes about this idea: what are the limits of our capacity to shape the world to suit ourselves? This idea of solar geoengineering, to me, is kind of the ultimate [attempt to shape the world]. Some people will call it deeply hubristic, you know. Others will see it very pragmatically and as a response, a survival response, to what I think is almost an existential crisis. People debate that all the time. It's a huge harm multiplier– climate change–and we've been focused on one half of the equation for a really long time, which is greenhouse gas buildup in the atmosphere, and how that affects both the climate, but also ocean acidification and other things.

Luke Iseman

Until now, there hasn't been a lot of attention that people have paid seriously to the other side of the equation, which is the amount of sunlight that gets into the earth. There are risks, many risks involved. But this is a scientific problem. There is something you can do if you're worried about heat, and that is reduce the amount of sunlight that's coming into the earth. And to me, it really pulls together so many threads about what it means to like be a human on this planet, at this point in time when we have so much power over ecosystems. And so it's this question, ultimately, of just how far will we go in our quest to adapt the planet to the ways and the lifestyles and the need that we have as humans. This film really poses that question, which is, are there limits, and should there be, and are there things we can do if things get too hot?

♦

• Dorothy Fortenberry on Climate Storytelling
• Director Interview: Gints Zilbalodis on FLOW
• Bill McKibben on EXTRAPOLATIONS

THE AGE OF WATER. Dir. Alfredo Alcántara, Isabel Alcántara Atalaya. NYC Premiere. “Set in Mexico’s heartland, this urgent investigative documentary follows a group of women who uncover radioactive contamination in their water after three young girls die of leukemia. These mothers-turned-activists link the crisis to the corporate extraction of ancient rocks. Facing government denial and community resistance, they fight for accountability. Blending expert insight with local history and mythology, THE AGE OF WATER exposes a growing global issue, making clear that water contamination knows no borders.”

THE BALLOONISTS. Dir. John Dower. NYC Premiere. “After a number of false starts, Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard and his British navigator and co-pilot Brian Jones embark to circumnavigate the globe in a hot air balloon. Traversing adverse conditions and politically fraught airspace, the duo surges onward through the sky as they battle the elements and the ever-looming threat of disaster. This globe-trotting tale, featuring breathtaking archival footage, is a compelling look at one of the few modern feats of exploration.”

Still from THE BALLOONISTS. Courtesy of DOC NYC.

BELOW THE CLOUDS. Dir. Gianfranco Rosi. “Shot over three years in luminous black and white, Gianfranco Rossi’s new film unfolds across Naples, a city perched between Vesuvius and the sea, with tremors in the ground, echoes of ancient ruins, and everyday lives steeped in memory and unrest. In shadowed classrooms, makeshift after-school centers; in fire station switchboards, anxious voices; beneath the earth, tomb-robbers, gods, and ghosts. It’s a mosaic of time and history, of ordinary people holding onto meaning under a sky perpetually weighed by clouds.”

THE KEEPER. Dir. Jon Bowermaster. NYC Premiere. “For 25 years, charismatic river steward John Lipscomb has patrolled the Hudson in his wooden boat, covering more than 80,000 miles on ‘America’s first river.’ Fighting industrial waste, sewage, and negligence, Lipscomb has become both the river’s watchdog and poet laureate, bearing witness to its wounds and recoveries. Sweeping imagery and intimate reflection honor a life devoted to ecological justice while capturing the moment Lipscomb prepares to pass the torch to a new generation.”

Still from THE KEEPER. Courtesy of DOC NYC.

OMEGA WANTS TO DANCE. Dir. Ramon Tort. North American Premiere. “In an imagined future where humans no longer exist, an AI system reflects on dance as the essence of consciousness, spontaneity, and identity. Philosophers, historians, artists, and Nobel laureates trace dance across ritual, flamenco, butoh, rave culture, and historical dance epidemics. Eclectic archives, experimental interludes, and candid testimonies weave a vibrant essay on movement as joy, ritual, and survival. At once speculative sci-fi and grounded documentary, the film creates a dazzling meditation on humanity’s eternal urge to dance.”

THE PINK PILL: SEX, DRUGS & WHO HAS CONTROL. Dir. Aisling Chin-Yee. World Premiere. “Following advocates pushing for FDA approval of a pill demonstrated to boost female desire, this engaging documentary explores stark inequalities regarding women’s sexual health. The film exposes how medical education and healthcare institutions systematically ignore women’s sexual needs while normalizing dozens of drugs for male erectile dysfunction. Witty, urgent, and illuminating, THE PINK PILL interrogates the double standards in science, medicine, and society that shape how female desire is understood and often dismissed.”

PLAN C FOR CIVILIZATION. Dir. Ben Kalina. World Premiere. “Physicist David Keith, a leading and controversial figure in solar geoengineering, seeks to test his planetary-cooling technology after decades of research and theorization. His journey unfolds amid fierce debates over the ethical, political, and environmental implications of reflecting sunlight to slow global warming. Activists warn that the technology could delay fossil fuel reductions or be misused geopolitically. The documentary offers a gripping, real-time look at science shaped by public discourse, ethics, and institutional power.”

SHIFTING BASELINES. Dir. Julien Elie. NYC Premiere. “Many of those who called Boca Chica home don’t anymore. When Elon Musk’s SpaceX decided to build its 50-story rocket in the Texas town, it forced people away. Birds have been stopped in flight, and people who remained can no longer access the beaches they grew up visiting. Julien Elie’s dystopic sci-fi documentary is a warning for what happens when greed and ego seem to have no visible boundaries.”

Still from SHIFTING BASELINES. Courtesy of DOC NYC.

THE TALE OF SILYVAN. Dir. Tamara Kotevska. “In rural North Macedonia, when a farmer’s family departs for opportunity abroad and government policies render his land unsellable, he takes work in a landfill. There he rescues an injured white stork, forming an unlikely bond. Interwoven with a local folktale of transformation and loss, the lyrical film becomes a meditation on migration, aging, nature, and the ways kindness can persist in the hollow spaces left by change.”

UNANIMAL. Dirs. Tuva Bjork, Sally Jacobson. North American Premiere. “Beautifully composed and subtly unsettling, UNANIMAL interrogates the entangled, often contradictory relationship between humans and animals. Narrated with calm detachment by Isabella Rossellini, the essay film offers a critical yet poetic historical lens on the evolution of our cohabitation with nonhuman life. It creates space for viewers to question the ways we project meaning onto animals, and how our frameworks of science, entertainment, and affection shape their lives—and ours.”

• Director Interview: Gianfranco Rosi on BELOW THE CLOUDS
• Science Films at DOC NYC 2024/a>
• Science Films at DOC NYC 2023

Sloan Science & Film: How did you and your fellow directors come to focus specifically on the H. W. Bush administration?

Pedro Kos: My fellow directors Bonni and Jon have made several films in the climate space, including THE ISLAND PRESIDENT and AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL: TRUTH TO POWER. They’re always thinking of new ways to humanize and to bring life to this issue that is vital to everyone living on this planet. In 2018, we all separately read a New York Times Magazine article by Nathaniel Rich, which became the book Losing Earth. We were blown away by it because it pulled back the curtain to show how science coalesced in the late 1970s and early 1980s but then became a political football towards the very late 1980s and the early 1990s. We were aware of this, but I personally can say I was deeply unaware of all the intricacies and the human drama that unfolded. We got super excited and started to think about how to bring this story to life. We all agreed we had to do so in a way that really brings home the fact that this was accepted science. This was not controversial, yet it became something of controversy.

We were shocked to see, in the archives from the 1988 election, that both candidates ran as environmentalists. Both candidates promised to tackle the climate crisis. The Republican candidate for president, George H.W. Bush, said in his speech, ‘If you're worried about the greenhouse effect, wait until you see the White House effect. And as president, I intend to do something about it.’ That was a promise that he made and that's where we got the title from.

SS&F: The film makes you feel as though you are flipping through the channels or watching home videos in someone’s living room. How did you arrive at that visual style?

PK: We all admire archival vérité, meaning documentaries which are stitched together from solely archival materials. That was appealing to us because if we were going to turn on our camera to the present, that would automatically carry the political connotation that we currently have, where [climate change] is a binary issue depending on which political party you are affiliated with. We wanted to build a time machine and take the audience back to a time when this was a mom-and-pop issue everyone could get behind.

It took an enormous, daunting archival search. We amassed over 14,000 pieces of archive. First, we were looking for the characters that appeared in the book, but it was hard to translate. We began to see what other materials were available and dug all the way back to the 1800s, as far back as the advent of photography in the 1840s and the drilling of the first commercial oil in Pennsylvania in 1859. Our early cuts went from the 1850s to the present. The 1850s was when the first studies began to emerge that carbon dioxide had a heating property in the atmosphere. A scientist by the name of Eunice Foote put out the first paper that said CO2 heats up the Earth.

We wanted to get it all but in piecing it together, and we saw that the human drama really took place in that '88 to '92 period.

Still from THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT. Courtesy of Netflix.

SS&F: How so?

PK: That was the period when we went from consensus and unanimity to a divided electorate. That drama was personified within the H.W. Bush administration, by H.W. Bush himself but also by the head of the EPA Bill Reilly and chief of staff John Sununu. That’s how we started to uncover more material, especially at the Bush Presidential Library. That opened up a huge door for us.

SS&F: How big of a team were you working with, given that volume of the footage?

PK: We had three of us acting as editors, plus Bonnie, Jon, and I as directors, and we had three producers. We had a wonderful pair of archival producers. On this, more than other films, it was an extraordinarily collaborative effort where the roles blended and everyone did a bit of everything because it was such a passion project for all of us.

Still from THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT. Courtesy of Netflix.

SS&F: How you feel the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 changed things between George H.W. Bush's campaign as an environmental candidate and the pivot we see four years later? Do you think it woke oil companies up to their mounting PR crisis?

PK: To begin, I have to say how revelatory I found the studies done by oil companies in the mid 1980s to be – particularly Exxon’s – which echoed the scientific community’s consensus on climate change. They were seeing exactly the same thing. All of those studies are now reality. They were correct. The predictions that they made back then are what we're living through now.

In terms of what we saw in the ‘88 presidential campaign, the oil industry was becoming increasingly concerned by the campaigns of both presidential candidates, especially George H.W. Bush. We found their articles, their editorials, their letters, which expressed their concerns about promises from Bush becoming a reality. The other thing we found to be quite revelatory was how open Bush seemed to be to taking action. What we saw from the Exxon Valdez spill was that the reaction from the oil companies was to circle the wagons. As you said, it hypercharged and expedited their work to counter environmental measures because they had a PR disaster in their hands. They needed to confront that and change the narrative as fast as they could, so they started applying the tobacco industry playbook: deny, counter, and split the electorate.

This was echoed from within the administration by John Sununu, the chief of staff, who had an open door to a lot of the oil company lobbyists and executives who were very much interested in countering the narrative within the administration. You have this big battle going on with the American public, but that's also happening within the administration. There was even a political cartoon that featured Bill Reilly as the angel on one side of Bush's ear and John Sununu as the devil with a pitchfork on the other. It was shocking to see all that play out in such a Shakespearean way.

Still from THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT. Courtesy of Netflix.

SS&F: Given all of the footage you amassed, was there any scientific data that didn’t make the final cut but you’d like to share with our readers?

PK: There was so much we wanted to get in there but at the end of the day, it's that the scientific facts are now speaking for themselves. What the scientists foresaw in 1988 is becoming a reality, and we are on a real trajectory. This film is about choices, the choices that we make as citizens. Who we vote for has an impact. We’re seeing people angered by the film, and we hope that people can tap into that sentiment and take action because it's up to us.

♦

• Sloan-Supported Films on Pioneering Women in Science
• Director Interview: Ian Cheney on New Release THE ARC OF OBLIVION
• Shadow of a Doubt: Climate Change Denial

To celebrate the Prize SFFILM will host a screening and panel discussion in November with Guillermo del Toro, the film’s sound designer Nathan Robitaille, VFX supervisor Dennis Berardi, head of concept design Guy Davis, and Dr. Jennifer Doudna, Nobel Laureate and co-inventor of CRISPR gene editing technology.

Sloan's Doron Weber said: "We’re delighted to award the Sloan Science in Cinema Prize to Guillermo del Toro’s FRANKENSTEIN, a brilliant and original reimagining of Mary Shelley’s classic novel. del Toro uses his exceptional filmmaking talents to both dramatize and humanize the cautionary tale of a scientist and his experimental creation of life through unorthodox methods, exploring the consequences of scientific hubris. The prescient 200-year-old story touches on contemporary scientific fields such as genetic and tissue engineering and transplantation as well as emerging technologies such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and artificial intelligence. FRANKENSTEIN joins over 900 science and film projects supported by the Sloan Foundation, including SFFILM’s honors of outstanding films like OPPENHEIMER, TWISTERS, DON’T LOOK UP, and HIDDEN FIGURES.”

• SFFILM 2024 Sloan Science in Cinema Fellows Announced
• A Spark of Being: Haifaa al-Mansour’s Mary Shelley
• Bringing Back the Dead

This year Sloan grantee Ian Cheney opened the festival with his latest documentary, OBSERVER. Cheney’s documentary PICTURE A SCIENTIST (co-directed by Sharon Shattuck) won an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Feature Film Grant in 2020 and he has remained prolific since. His subsequent feature documentary THE ARC OF OBLIVION, was released by Abramorama in 2024 following its world premiere at SXSW 2023. Sloan Science and Film’s Sonia Epstein sat down with Cheney last year to discuss the film and his thoughts on visualizing science. Check out that interview here.

Produced by The Wonder Collaborative, the Science Communication Lab’s feature film unit, OBSERVER brings a diverse group of observers around the world to spark conversation about how humans perceive the world around them. Read more about the film below and stay tuned for further coverage on this title as it continues its United States tour.

About OBSERVER:

In OBSERVER, filmmaker Ian Cheney embarks on an experiment in which he brings a series of keen-eyed observers - scientists, artists, a hunter - to a range of locations around the world, often without telling them where they are going, and asks them simply to describe what they see. What unfolds is a deep exploration and celebration of the power of observation: what happens when you find new ways to sense and perceive the world around you? With customary whimsy and a small painted red square that Cheney brings on every journey, the film is an invitation to viewers to find beauty and meaning in even the most quotidian of locales.

• Sloan Grantee to Open Science New Wave Festival at MoMI
• Director Interview: Ian Cheney on New Release THE ARC OF OBLIVION
• Flora Lichtman and Sharon Shattuck's Animated Life

Science & Film: Where did your interest in this story begin?

Liza Mandelup: I started thinking about beauty as a currency. A lot of my films start from very abstract ideas. The form comes after. I really felt like I was thinking about how our society values beauty in such an extreme way, and how social media has totally exacerbated that.

When I get the idea, it sits in the back of my head, and I'm on the internet, and I'm talking to people, I'm doing other shoots, and I met this woman while I was on another shoot. I was complimenting her eyes. I was like, Where are you from? Who in your family has these beautiful blue eyes? I don't know why I was asking these questions. And eventually, she was like, I went to India and got these eyes. That sentence radiated in my brain. What does that even mean? You went to India and got these eyes? She tipped me off to what the company was. I went home that night and looked at their YouTube channel, and I was like, this is bonkers, what's going on here? It all happened from there. I got in touch with the company, the company said you can make a documentary, and helped me find people to make it with. It was one of those things where I was just kind of poking around, and then next thing you know I had this incredible access. I was like, Okay, gotta get funding for this. It really took off from there.

S&F: Now that you say that, the direct line from your film JAWLINE to this film wasn't in the forefront of my mind when I was watching CATERPILLAR, but this is definitely a theme you've explored previously.

LM: I really like films where, when I say it, "it's a film about a controversial eye surgery that takes place in India," you have no idea how to visualize that. That is what gets me excited, that challenge, and showing people that I'm going to make this cinematic film about this thing that doesn't seem cinematic, and seems totally random. I got so excited thinking about all the metaphorical ideas: to see and be seen through a new set of eyes. The idea that the company was selling: see the world differently, change your perspective, and have other people see you differently. All these things are really symbolic of beauty but also so literal to eyes.

When we were filming at one point when we were in India, I realized that our characters are going to change color eyes at some point and the film is going to feel different. It was this sort of symbolic thing about aesthetics and beauty where it was almost like the camera gravitated towards the characters more when they had these new eyes. Then, the next chapter of this film is understanding, does this work?

S&F: One of the weirdest parts of the film is when the surgery doesn't go as planned and then they all have the same color eyes, which is actually so artificial. In reality, everyone's eyes are different...

LM: Eyes feel like they are something that is you and not something you're ever going to change. Cosmetic procedures are a part of my interest, and I continue to be interested in that and how you can obtain beauty and define it for yourself. But also, it is defined by society, and you think you're defining it for yourself. What really made me want to tell the story here was I never thought that eyes were something that you ever thought to change or to feel insecure about. They are just who you are, you are born with these eyes. It's not supposed to be linked to vanity, it's supposed to be linked to your identity, your DNA. It felt like such an interesting thing for a company to convince people that this is something you can change. As we were making this I was like, is this something people thought about changing, or were they told to change it through this company? I think a lot about psychology when I'm making films. The psychology of being fed videos on YouTube and what are your own ideas, and what are the ideas that you're being convinced to believe? This film lives in that gray area.

S&F: How did you pick your main character, and how much of his background and story did you want to get into?

LM: Once I met David's mom, I realized that his mom has not accepted his identity, and he really wants to change his identity. My interpretation this dynamic with his mom was that he was looking for something that he could change about himself, while his mom could also still love him. His mom would repeatedly tell him, I can love you, but only to a certain degree. If you go too far, that's just not my son. I was also interested in relatability. People have such complicated relationships with their mothers, and you never stop kind of defining your whole life by the love that you have from your mom. I was interested in how we were able to witness and film how that [relationship] was having such an impact on how he viewed himself.

I also think that you have to see this film and understand how much value society puts on blue and green eye—people aren't going there to get brown eyes. What does that symbolize?

S&F: You said that the company was on board with this film, what about the second half when you explore whether or not it worked?

LM: Well, here's the interesting thing about the company. The company is anonymous, nobody, the company would reveal themselves to me, and I never got anything besides a first name. When we went to India, the actual company BrightOcular was not there. I asked if they were going to send someone, but they wouldn't reveal who they were. I never got anybody to talk to me from the company, besides email. When I was in India, I realized what was actually going on: this is a company that does the YouTube videos, gets people to India, and then once you're in India, you're just in the hands of these doctors in India. So it's true medical tourism. But the people going into the procedure were not always aware that it was medical tourism. So, the access actually came from BrightOcular, where they were like, yes, you can make this film, but I never got to meet them.

S&F: So just to understand what you mean in terms of medical tourism, they're basically just sending people to the hospital and then they get a cut of whatever people pay?

LM: Yeah, a big cut. You can look at them like a travel agency, and content marketing, where they set up all the YouTube videos. They work with somebody that makes those contacts but the actual BrightOcular company is sort of like the middleman. They have virtual consultants for the whole thing. It basically makes you feel like you're working with an American company. And then what's in the film is you get to India, and you realize, maybe I'm not working with an American company, I've just been emailing with an American company. By the time the patients are there, they're sort of confused, but they're already there. They've already paid money, or they've already told everybody and set up their whole life to come back with a different look. So, it creates a lot of misinformation I would say. The company has existed in the shadows intentionally, I think.

S&F: Have you had any feedback from them on the film?

LM: No. I would love for someone at the company to get in touch with me. We spoke after we came back from India and stayed in touch but then it just kind of fell off. I asked for like interviews with them, obviously and nobody would come forward for an interview. Someone would have to tell me who they are, and I think they're not willing to do that, because they've been set up to intentionally be mysterious.

S&F: I don't know that you would know this, but, is this unique for a medical tourism company?

LM: To be honest, I didn't go into becoming an expert in all types of medical tourism for this film. I was really focused on the film, but I think that when we were in India, you saw that you could go to India and can get hair transplants, all these things. A lot of the people we were filming with had other procedures done abroad. That's a whole other film and a whole other world. I think the way the company is operating is strange. I wouldn't go around saying that this is like normal. It felt strange to everyone in the film, that's like a part of it.

I wanted to stay with the experience of the patient trying to rationalize Should I do this, should I not do this? I stay really close to my subjects—I hate that word, to be honest. Like, David is now a friend of mine. But I try to stay in their mindsets. That is a big part of my process. For JAWLINE, I never went around interviewing people about the top-to-bottom exploitation in the industry. It's more about the human experience and how humans grapple with what they're going through. And for my process, I need to be educated, but I also need to stay in the perspective of the people that I'm filming. This is a human story about someone who went through something, and if you pull out too much, I don't feel like you get that. I pull out a little bit to show you there's a larger world around them, but my focus is in making a relatable character with a human story that has a lot of emotional depth and has people contemplating how to exist.

S&F: My experience watching the film was also thinking about how the procedure was a success, even though it wasn't in some physical respects, but that it did help David become more comfortable with himself.

LM: Here's the thing, when people ask, how do you choose a character? I only know I've chosen the right character towards the end. That's the scary thing about documentary. I have a background in casting, and I feel like I give a lot of thought to who I'm going to take a risk on. But really, you don't know that you've made the right decision until you're in the edit and you're like, did this person's perspective shift? Did we start in one place and end in another? Sometimes you film with someone whose perspective doesn't shift and that person can't really be in the film in a big way, because, to me, to really complete the journey that I'm looking for, and also how to call it in the end, is when someone has a different perspective of the experience that they lived. And I truly felt that with David, that he was like, I got to walk a mile in someone else's shoes, and I learned something from it. I love that story. I love that idea because I think that fantasy of: what if I could be a different me, a different version of myself, or me 2.0, or you with the better life, can I just be you?Those ideas and anxieties are things that people are riddled with, and I thought it was interesting to put that into a film.
♦

• Director Liza Mandelup On JAWLINE
• Director Interview: Jessica Kingdon's ASCENSION
• Joe Hunting on WE MET IN VIRTUAL REALITY

WFF also boasts several special events, including an annual awards ceremony where the winners for Best Documentary Feature, Best Ultra Indie, and Best Short Documentary – as selected by a jury – are revealed and celebrated. The event will also honor previously announced award recipients: director Ira Sachs (Fiercely Independent Award), documentarian Laura Poitras (Freedom of Expression Award), and filmmaking duo Tia Lessin and Carl Deal (Art of Activism Award).

Notable artists and film professionals will also lend their expertise to ten panels October 17-19. Covering a range of topics from censorship to the future of film, the panel series kicks off today with Defining Success in Documentary Filmmaking. Participants include Ryan White (GOOD NIGHT OPPY) and Emmy, Independent Spirit, and Peabody Award–winning documentarian Geeta Gandbhir. Already garnering Oscar buzz, Gandbhir’s highly acclaimed new film THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR is available to stream on Netflix as of today, following its limited theatrical release on October 10 and rapturous receptions at Sundance and New York Film Festival earlier this year.

Other highlights at the festival include the Hudson Valley premiere of Sloan grantee Tasha Van Zandt’s documentary A LIFE ILLUMINATED. Van Zandt took the film to new depths – quite literally. Innovating new techniques to film over 3,000 feet below sea level, Van Zandt was able to capture stunning footage of marine biologist Dr. Edie Widder during submersible research dives that would prove critical to advancing our understanding of bioluminescence in the deep sea. Read our recent interview with Van Zandt here.

Van Zandt is not the only Sloan grantee with work at the festival. Urvashi Pathania‘s short film SKIN makes its East Coast premiere at WFF. HOT AIR, a previous short of Pathania’s about Eunice Newton Foote, won a Sloan Production Award at USC in 2019 and can be streamed in its entirety here.

DOCUMENTARY

A LIFE ILLUMINATED. Dir. Tasha Van Zandt. Hudson Valley Premiere. “After a lifetime of unveiling the deep sea’s most elusive secrets, pioneering marine biologist Dr. Edie Widder descends 3,300 feet into the ocean's depths on her most groundbreaking mission yet: to capture a bioluminescent phenomenon that could transform our understanding of life on Earth. “

Still from A LIFE ILLUMINATED. Courtesy of WFF.

FATAL WATCH. Dirs. Mark Benjamin, Katie Carpenter. New York Premiere. “Dead men tell the ocean’s secrets. Four marine observers vanish at sea under suspicious circumstances. This investigation uncovers why. From Fiji to Ghana, Spain to the US, this film reveals the underbelly of the global tuna trade, where profit outweighs human life and environmental destruction is buried beneath the waves.”

RIVER OF GRASS. Dir. Sasha Wortzel. Hudson Valley Premiere. “. . . Through intimate cinematography and interviews with conservationists, biologists, and Indigenous voices, the film captures the slow unraveling of one of America’s most vital wetlands.”

Still from RIVER OF GRASS. Courtesy of WFF.

STARMAN. Dir. Robert Stone. New York Premiere. “You won’t find a more dynamic documentary subject than NASA robotics engineer turned best-selling science fiction author Gentry Lee. STARMAN gives the octogenarian Lee the ideal platform to ponder life’s big questions including the biggest of all: are we alone in the universe?”

THE KEEPER. Dir. Jon Bowermaster. World Premiere “New York’s Hudson River stars in Jon Bowermaster’s environmental documentary THE KEEPER about America’s ‘first river’. The film follows patrol boat captain John Lipscomb who has been the eyes and ears of the environmental watchdog group Riverkeeper and is fast approaching retirement. We learn that while the River might look more beautiful and cleaner than ever, the news isn’t all that great.”

NARRATIVE

NUREMBERG. Dir. James Vanderbilt. “The Allies, led by the unyielding chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon), have the task of ensuring the Nazi regime answers for the unveiled horrors of the Holocaust at the Nuremberg trials, while a US Army psychiatrist (Rami Malek) is locked in a dramatic psychological duel with former Reichsmarschall Herman Goring (Russell Crowe).”

THE SECRET AGENT. Dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho. Hudson Valley Premiere. "Kleber Mendonça Filho’s political thriller is set in 1970s Brazil during the dictatorship. Leading actor Wagner Moura (CIVIL WAR) shines as a disgraced engineer who returns to his hometown, Recife, to see his son and confront a corrupt establishment that ruined his career.”

Still from THE SECRET AGENT. Courtesy of WFF.

• Science Films at True/False 2025
• Sloan Film Collection: Celebrating Women Scientists Born in July
• Sloan-Supported Films on Pioneering Women in Science

Aaron Lemle’s BAT BOY is being distributed on Omeleto, YouTube’s top showcase of award-winning short films. Aaron says that “BAT BOY has had a fantastic festival run, screening at three Academy-qualifying festivals, winning multiple awards, and reaching audiences from Italy to Chile. Thank you to the all-star cast and crew that made this film possible, the generous support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the UCLA Institute of Environment and Sustainability, and to everyone who touched this film in big and small ways.” You can watch the film here.

Noam Argov’s VERSE is complete and seeking distribution. Noam says: “When I was shooting the film, that exhibit at MoMI from about a year ago that had all those video games and technology was a huge inspiration to me in pushing the boundaries of the medium.”

Camille Hamadé’s TO FADE AWAY is complete and in the midst of its festival run. Hamadé is also concluding four years of research, culminating in a feature version of the film. He has just finished the screenplay. The festival run of the short will conclude in 2026.

All of these films will one day be made available for free on Sloan Science & Film.

20 years ago, in 2005, UCLA graduate student Shanee Edwards won a Sloan Screenplay Award for ENCHANTRESS OF NUMBERS, a dramatization of the life of Ada Lovelace who is often regarded as the first computer programmer. In 2019, Edwards published her screenplay as the novel Ada Lovelace: the Countess who Dreamed in Numbers, which was released on March 1 that year. Sloan Science & Film’s Sonia Shechet Epstein interviewed Edwards by phone about the story and the process of turning the screenplay into a novel. In recognition of Ada Lovelace Day, it has been republished in its entirety below.

Science & Film: Can you tell me about your screenplay, and why you wanted to turn it into a book?

Shanee Edwards: I was awarded the Sloan award in 2005 for my screenplay ENCHANTRESS OF NUMBERS. It is a biopic about a woman named Ada Lovelace who is considered to be the world's first computer programmer for the work she did with [mathematician] Charles Babbage in the 1800s.

My screenplay initially got a lot of heat. It got optioned and I had a director attached and I had actresses attached, but at the time period films were considered very expensive to make and it was hard to get investors from Europe to tell a British woman’s story, especially since I was American. I'm not saying that never happened, but I knew that was a one strike against me. People would get excited about it, we’d start to put the financing together, and then it would fall apart. And finally, I just got so frustrated because I love her story and I was just so excited to be able to share that story. And if your screenplay doesn't get made there is nothing you can do. I could have tried to shoot it on my iPhone but it’s probably not going to look so great, you know [laughs]. So I figured the next best thing would be to write a novel. I had never written a novel before and it was a very, very different experience.

Shanee Edwards signing her book. Photo courtesy Edwards.

S&F : Did you have to buy the option back for your screenplay?

SE: It had expired fortunately. Honestly, I don’t really know what the legal stuff is going from a screenplay to a novel. I don't think it would have been a problem legally but I don't really know.

S&F: When did you begin writing the book, and what were some of the challenges with that form?

SE: I have a background in theater and then in film. All of the writing I had ever done was meant to be spoken by actors. So getting into a novel, you have to describe every little detail. You do a little bit of that in the screenplay, but very little.

My first attempt at writing the novel I wrote it in the third person, because I looked around at some young adult writing and it all seemed to be in third person and I thought, okay, well that's what I have to do. But it was terrible. So I went back and rewrote it in the first person, from the point of view of Ada Lovelace and it just took off because that was me sort of getting in the head of the character I had created and letting the reader experience her thoughts and what was going on inside her head. I realized that really worked.

S&F: Did you have to do additional research for the book in addition to what you did for the film, where I imagine you had a science advisor?

SE: I did have a science advisor when I was writing the script, and I also traveled to Oxford University in England. I was given permission by the Byron Estate—her father was Lord Byron—to read Ada’s actual handwritten letters from 200 years ago. It was really really really cool.

I didn't have to do any additional research for the novel other than like what people ate in Victorian England. That was my favorite part because they ate really disgusting things like jellied eeland Stargazy pie which is like a favorite fish pie where the fish heads are on top of the pie and it is like they are gazing at the stars. All those little details that I could never put into the screenplay I got to put into the novel, so that’s why it was fun.

S&F: Speaking of details, something that often happens to films about science is that once they get made a lot of a lot of the science from the script tends to drops out. I'm wondering if in the process of writing the novel that was true for you too or whether the mathematics stayed in there?

SE: Actually I was able to include a little bit more of Ada’s studies. Not only did she study mathematics, but she also studied the stars and the planets and all that kind of stuff. So I got to put a little bit more science into it than probably you would have seen in a screenplay. And that was fun to me, because I'm into it.

S&F: Have you thought about the reverse now, going back to it as a film that is?

SE: Oh, I would give a body part to have someone make this film [laughs]. Oh my gosh, it's just been a long time, you know. Part of me also wrote the novel so that I could kind of move on from this project—though obviously I've written other screenplays. You do hear stories about screenplays getting made after 20 years. If that happened, I would be the happiest person on planet Earth, but, you know, we’ll see. Not holding my breath, Sonia!

S&F: Has any of your other work integrated in science in any way?

SE: Yeah. From the ENCHANTRESS OF NUMBERS script I got my first agent and my first writing job. My first writing job was to write a biopic about Charles Darwin. Needless to say I had to really, really research evolution and Darwin. I ended up going to his house in England. That was great. There was a competing project that was shooting right as we finished the screenplay so again that project kind of went dead in the water [laughs].I’m writing comedy now, just so you know.

S&F: Cool! For the screen?

SE: Yeah. I’m writing an R-rated comedy about four women.

S&F: So how has it been to have the novel in the world?

SE: It was published in March of this year. Just published! I’ve done one signing and it was one of the most positive experiences of my writing career. In LA, there's a place called Silicon Beach where Google and Facebook and all of the tech companies are in this one mile area. I did my signing there and there were all these female coders who knew of Ada Lovelace and came up and just bought the book! It was just really fun, I was like, oh these are my people, they know who she is. I spent years trying to explain to everybody who Ada Lovelace is and these women just got it, so that was so fun.

S&F: That’s one of the things of having your work in the world, your people come to you. Are you planning on doing any other signings?

SE: Yes, I'm working on getting another one in LA, and another one in Reno, Nevada. So we’ll see what happens. This is the first interview I've done about the book. I'm so grateful and thrilled to be part of the Sloan family. And I will say, when you're a screenwriter you always feel like you have no power because you're waiting for the directors and producers and money. But this was one way that I could take my story and take control back. I would encourage any screenwriter, especially people who have these great science screenplays, to put it into novel form. Or make it a web series. Do something with it, you know, you obviously poured your heart and soul into it so see what other form it can take.

Shanee Edwards's novel Ada Lovelace: the Countess who Dreamed in Numbers is now available on Amazon.

She was the first human to observe chimpanzees closely in the wild for scientific purposes. Her observations redefined what makes humans unique; they led to a greater understanding of homo sapiens’ ancestors. The story of Jane Goodall transcends the woman herself. Brett Morgen’s new documentary, JANE, is centered on the period from Dr. Goodall’s life and work in Africa of first encounters and establishment of long-term study. She was getting to know chimpanzees–she said, at a screening in September, that these were “the best days of my entire life.”

JANE is composed of footage–which Morgen clearly color-corrected, to the film’s detriment–from the 1960s shot on 16mm with a Bolex camera by Dr. Goodall’s then-husband Hugo van Lawick. Goodall was in Tanzania at the Gombe Stream National Park studying chimpanzee behavior with funding in part from the National Geographic Society, even though at the time she had no formal education. Lawick was on assignment from National Geographic to shoot Goodall’s work with chimpanzees in order to help with research funding. After a preview screening of JANE that Science & Film attended in New York on September 25, Dr. Goodall remarked on how JANE is “so pure to how I was back then.”

“I was being at one with nature and overcoming this barrier between us and another species, finding all these amazing minds and personalities that science then told me subsequently didn’t exist.” Jane Goodall conducted her first scientific study in collaboration with paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey who was interested in human evolution. (Mary, Leakey’s wife, was a paleoanthropologist as well and together they demonstrated that humans evolved in Africa. Mary Leakey uncovered hominid footprints in Tanzania which are the oldest known footprints of bipedal humans.) After two years at Gombe, Dr. Goodall became accepted by the chimpanzee community such that she was able to feed the male chimp she named David Greybeard bananas and play with the infant Flint.

When Dr. Goodall enrolled in Cambridge University for a Ph.D. in ethology, she was told “you’ve done everything wrong. You should have given the chimpanzees numbers not names.” Speaking about animals’ personalities, minds, or emotions was anthropomorphizing them, her professors at Cambridge told her. “Fortunately,” Dr. Goodall said at the screening, “I had this teacher when I was a child who was my dog. Because you can’t share your life with a dog, or a cat, or a rat and not know that of course animals have personalities, minds, and feelings.”

In JANE, Dr. Goodall talks about how Dr. Doolittle and Tarzan inspired her love of animals and desire to live with them in Africa. At the screening, Science & Film asked about what other books inspired her. “We didn’t have any money [growing up] so it was books from the library or second-hand bookshops where I found a lot of early traveller tales about Africa.” There was one book in particular that her mother, who later served as her chaperone in Africa, saved up to buy with coupons. “It was called The Miracle of Life and it was not for children. I was only about 11, and I just spent hours and hours and hours reading,” Dr. Goodall said. “It went through the diversification of species, it went through medical history, it went through evolution. That book has been reissued. You can still get it.”

To make JANE, Brett Morgen went through 140 hours of archival footage taken by Hugo van Lawick who “wasn’t allowed a film crew because it would spook the animals, so he had carry all the equipment by himself,” Morgen said in awe at the screening. “The equipment weighed a ton. And if you went to set up a shot and the chimps came the other direction there was nothing for that day. Not to mention changing magazines [that hold the film in the camera] in the middle of a jungle.”

Watch the film here:

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Over a period of three or four years, Rosi filmed a disparate group of people, including archaeologists patiently and painstakingly uncovering artifacts in massive dig sites; a museum curator tending to the decaying statues of vanquished warriors; a tireless teacher who shares Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables and other daunting classics with a group of teens; a fire department’s headquarters, where dispatchers tend to a never-ending assortment of real or exaggerated emergencies; and a duo of Syrian shipworkers who escape the ravages of war in their own country by helping to transport tons of Ukrainian wheat from Odessa to Italy. Odd connections emerge; a mountain of grain looks unmistakably like Vesuvius, Russia’s war on Ukraine is linked to the many conquests of the Roman empire. And a teenager obsessed with food who aspires to be a chef, studies the many different ways to cook grain.

BELOW THE CLOUDS celebrates the work of archeologists, but it also reveals that cinema itself is a form of archaeology. Rosi frames the film with scenes of old footage being projected in vast decaying cinemas, reminding us that movies outlive the people who are in them, the people who made them, and the people who first watched them. And in his work as a cinéma vérité filmmaker, he is a type of archaeologist himself, creating an exquisite, richly detailed, record of present-day life that will live on as both an artifact of its time, and an artwork for the ages.

Science & Film was pleased to talk with Rosi at the Toronto International Film Festival, where BELOW THE CLOUDS had its North American premiere. Ahead of its U.S. premiere at the 63rd New York Film Festival, Mubi announced the film will release in early 2026, following a qualifying release in fall 2025.

Science & Film: Your friend, the director Pietro Marcello [director of DUSE, inspired you to make this film?

Gianfranco Rosi: Pietro is from Caserta, near Naples. When he was a kid, he used to be near Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii. He always wanted to make a documentary there, but he said maybe I should do it. I have more patience, and more time to spend there to do it. Pietro drifted to big fiction films. All my colleagues in documentary abandoned me. I’m still resisting.

S&F: You have no temptation to make fiction films?

GR: No. I don't like to sit down and write a story and cast it and make it happen in three weeks, four, six weeks shooting. Everything gets consumed in such a short time. And you have to transfer what you wrote into something in time. It's a huge machine that starts with little control.

I'm a one-man crew. I have just one assistant with me. Usually, it's a local person I find. Here it was a friend of Pietro, Alberto Landolfi, a scout and location manager, who was not trained as an assistant. Pietro said, you have to contact him. He's going to take you around Naples. And then slowly he became my assistant. He spent three years with me.

S&F: One of the striking things in the film is how beautiful the language is. The way people talk about their work, and think about the meaning of what they’re doing, whether it’s archeology, or teaching, or the teenager who wants to be a chef.

GR: In all my films I always discover that there's an incredible eloquenza. Maria, who works in the museum, speaks in such an incredible way. And when people start calling in to the fire department with their crises, it’s pure theater.

I love to find in documentaries the writing that you cannot create in your room. It's something so powerful and so surprising that only real people can give you.

Everything in making my film is about casting, choosing the right people. Usually I select five, six, seven stories, and I go with them to the end of the process of writing. It's writing day by day with the camera and with their own life intimacy. And that's why it's important for me to build trust, when you enter into the unknown world of a person. They’re first a person, then they become characters eventually.

S & F: The film feels like a work of art. How do you work with your subjects while filming? How do you prepare them for the shots that you're going to do, to be themselves in front of the camera?

GR: Well, I usually choose a location, a space, and then I put my camera there and I let them be. With Maria, the museum curator, she always takes notes. I asked her, when you take notes, do you talk to yourself? She said yes, she does, it’s very common for me to do that. So I said, that's the only thing I ask, when you write, to say what you’re writing.

We filmed in a magnificent room of the museum, with sculptures of the defeated warriors. That scene is fantastic. It's completely her world and her words. And it was so beautiful, the way she described it. And it evoked the war in Ukraine. And we cut to the shipworkers bringing grain from Ukraine, and then the kid talking about how to cook great in the recipe he wants to make. There are always elements like that, that occur by chance.

And I love the Japanese archaeologist. He’s spent 22 years excavating this place. It's a collaboration between the University of Tokyo and the University of Archaeology in Naples. He just has this passion about memory and bringing the past alive.

I always want to put in my film an element of the institutional. This time I chose the fire department, and they gave me permission. I went into this room and saw that it’s like a theater, people calling in with the most bizarre problems.

And then I met the prosecutor and fell in love with him. He has an incredible mind. He's one of the busiest prosecutors because he's in an area in Naples and this area is full of criminality. And he devotes himself to fighting that. So, all the characters have a very secular sense of devotion. They are giving themselves to others, to other causes. That is the element that unifies the whole stories in the film.

S & F: I'm sure you have the feeling that you're doing a form of archaeology, that you're creating a work that is preserving the past.

GR: Well, it's like digging slowly. We spent almost four years there. When I started with the idea of making a film there, the first impact on me was a sense of history, of stratification, of time suspended, of the past, the present, the possible future, everything divided by this very thin border, which is memory, constantly.

Naples is like a huge offscreen element, something that you don't see, but it's part of the storytelling, it's there, it's like a voiceover.

S & F: Right, but you're also filming on the periphery of the city. You're filming the parts of Naples that most people don't see.

GR: Naples is like a huge time machine. Whatever you see contains something else, from the past. You have to go deep and down.

It's amazing to go under the tunnels, where the prosecutor talks about all the looting there, and says that the people who did it are stealing our memory, our past. They came here, and took all our history, our memory, from places that survived the earthquake and the war, and they have no sense of community. That's what is very important in the film, a sense of community. They all have a sense of community. That's the word I was looking for, sense of community.

Which is a devotion somehow, you know, a secular sense of devotion. They are all devoted to a cause. All the characters. The teacher, I mean, all the people are sort of passing knowledge down and also preserving for the future.

Margaret Mead (who is cancelled now) used to say that civilization starts the moment someone does something for others. The moment you start giving your attention to others, that's when civilization starts. And Naples is one of the oldest civilizations, it's like an entity on its own. That's why I love when I found that sentence of Cocteau, where he said Naples produced all the clouds in the world. This mountain is like Shiva, the destroyer and the regenerator. And feeling that this mountain is producing all the clouds of the world is such a powerful image. It brings Naples universality and it almost becomes an archetype.

S & F: It seems like the clouds might have inspired the way that you shot the film in black-and-white, like the look of the film.

GR: never shoot with no clouds because clouds don't give me a contrast. It gives all the elements of the gray. When I shoot, I wait for the clouds. And clouds become my companion. It becomes like a Greek chorus.

S & F: But what did you have in mind in terms of the style and look of the film that you wanted to make? I mean, I was thinking of other filmmakers who have made beautiful black and white films, like Peter Hutton.

GR: I didn't really have a reference. For me, the use of black and white was a narrative need. I wanted to use archival footage in the film, but I didn't know how. Pietro [Marcello] is the master of archival footage. I cannot go in that territory. I knew that I wanted to use archival footage, and I didn't know how until I discovered this broken cinema. I said, perfect, that's a story.

There are very few theaters left in Italy. People don't go to this movie. So, the cinema has become an archaeological site. And the images come alive through the memory of the screen. We filmed in two destroyed cinemas. Now they are becoming supermarkets.

Black and white makes you think of early silent film, and it makes you think of just how your film would be a record for the future. I wanted the present to become immediately archival. The present becomes immediately past. That's what the idea of black and white does for me. And black and white forces you to look at things in a different way. And transform things also. It suspends time.

When you see the way that the Ukrainian war comes into the film, you're thinking about the whole history of different wars. And the film is always dealing with transforming. You know, the mountain of the grain at the beginning looks like the volcano with the lava, but it's the grain that has been shipped from Ukraine.

S & F: All these connections that you’re talking about, how did you sculpt them in the editing room?

GR: Well, in this film I was able for the first time to do parallel work between shooting and editing. I did basically three years editing the film. Filming and editing, they were going on the same level. It was very important in this film because this was a very complex film. The fact that I was able to edit with my editor, Fabrizio Federico for three years, was a huge like a constant writing element.

And then you always find the right space for the next stories, like creating a musical composition. This note has to belong to the next note. And what is here, the silence, is the most important thing to move from this note to this other note, to this other note.

♦

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SS&F: How does it feel to have the film out in the world after its premiere at TIFF?

TVZ: It feels amazing. It’s been such a long journey to get here, and sharing it with audiences—especially Edie Widder’s community and our families—feels incredibly special. It’s exciting to finally let the film live in the world.

SS&F: When did this project begin for you?

TVZ: I’ve admired Edie since 2012, when I first saw her footage of the giant squid. That moment—seeing this mythical creature emerge from the darkness—sparked my curiosity about the person behind the lens. About five years ago, I reached out to Edie, and we began talking about what it would mean to tell her story. I was struck by how much of her work extended beyond that one moment. She’s been a pioneer in deep-sea exploration, developing cameras that reveal bioluminescence and opening our eyes to a world that was previously invisible. It’s been an incredible adventure to follow her journey and help share it with others.

SS&F: The cinematic appeal of bioluminescence is obvious. How did it shape the film’s aesthetic?

TVZ: Edie has spent her life proving that the ocean isn’t a dark, empty place—it’s full of light and life. She was one of the first to realize that turning off artificial lights and looking differently could reveal an entirely new world. That philosophy guided our approach to the film. We collaborated closely with Edie to translate her vision into a cinematic experience. We used low-light cameras and filmed in submersibles to capture bioluminescence in ways never seen before. Our team joined Edie on dives using two clear-sphere submersibles—one for science, where she and her research partner Nathan Robinson studied the flashback phenomenon, and one for media, where our director of photography Sebastian Zack and I documented the journey. It was a small, focused team working in extreme conditions to bring this hidden world to light.

Photo of Dr. Edie Widder. Courtesy of the filmmaker.

SS&F: There’s a moment in the film when Edie faces technical issues. Were you concerned?

TVZ: Absolutely. Filming in the deep sea is incredibly challenging. We faced a tropical storm that cut into our dive time, and our first two test dives had major setbacks—one camera cable was damaged by pressure, and on the second dive, we couldn’t capture the flashback phenomenon. For the third dive, we had to rig Edie’s submersible with cameras and microphones that could record for nine hours without any monitoring or battery changes. Communication between submersibles was limited to brief, unreliable through-water comms, and we were essentially two small orbs trying to find each other in total darkness. Personally, diving to 3,300 feet was both awe-inspiring and intimidating. I had moments of claustrophobia, especially when we landed on the ocean floor and I realized how much water was above us. But Edie’s mantra—’curiosity overcomes fear’—helped me reframe those moments and stay focused on the wonder of the experience.

SS&F: Did you feel your presence on the expedition helped amplify Edie’s work?

TVZ: Definitely. Edie’s mission has always been to make the unseen visible and shift how we perceive our ocean planet. Our goal was to follow in her footsteps and help share these discoveries with the world. The flashback phenomenon, which she’s pursued for years, is now documented and can be studied and shared. The ocean is vast and largely unexplored—Edie says 99.5% of the living space on our planet is in the ocean, yet we’ve only explored 0.005%. Bioluminescence may be the most common form of communication on Earth, but it’s a language of light we’re only beginning to understand. We hope the film inspires people to look differently, to be curious, and to advocate for ocean preservation.

SS&F: Were there moments you had to leave out of the final cut?

TVZ: So many. Edie has lived countless lives and made groundbreaking discoveries. She’s likely done more dives into the twilight zone than anyone else. We had to focus the story on her journey to this particular dive, but there are so many other stories we couldn’t include. In the edit, we worked with our amazing team to identify the key turning points that led her to this moment. If we could, we’d make a hundred films about Edie. We’ve only scratched the surface of what she’s seen and accomplished.

Still from A LIFE ILLUMINATED. Courtesy of Sandbox Films.

SS&F: I loved the Marcel Proust quote that opens the film, ‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes’. It really speaks to the intersection of science and art.

TVZ: Thank you. Edie shared that quote early in the process, and it became a guiding light for us. The idea of ‘seeing with new eyes’ is central to her work and to the film. It’s about expanding our perspective—through empathy, curiosity, and wonder—and realizing how much more there is to discover. That mindset gives us hope, not just for understanding the ocean, but for how we approach the world more broadly.

♦

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INVERSES by Lizzi Oyebode
Logline: Mathematician Emmy Noether faces her toughest test when the Nazis seize power in Germany. Inspired by true events.

Oyebode previously received the 2024 Sundance Institute and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Commissioning Grant for this feature project.

MCNAIR by Nile Price
Logline: MCNAIR tells the largely unheralded true story of the African American astronaut Dr. Ronald McNair and his journey as a member of NASA’s most diverse class during the historic Space Shuttle Program.

Price previously earned a 2023 Sloan Screenwriting Grant at his alma mater, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

THE RINGS OF SATURN by Tanju Özdemir
Logline: A pregnant Greek-American astrophysicist, working on the first image of a black hole (M87), travels to northeastern Turkey to trace her late mother’s origins, only to be drawn into the unravelling memory of an aging woman with Alzheimer’s and a village still haunted by the Greek-Turkish population exchange, forcing her to reconcile cosmic discovery with personal and historical loss.

WHY WE LOVE by David Wilner
Logline: When a pioneering love scientist recruits four very different volunteers — a former nun, a restless husband in an open marriage, a heartbroken fiancé, and a guarded trans woman — to map the brain’s lust, love, and attachment centers, she discovers that proving love’s biology may force her to confront the riskiest experiment of all: her own heart. Based on the groundbreaking life and work of Dr. Helen Fisher.

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SS&F: IMPACT is a thrilling space drama with international collaboration at its core. What inspired this story?

Yoel Gebremariam: This story was born from two ingredients during a college brainstorm session: the real-life developments of the Artemis and Chandrayaan space programs, and the question of how a meteor storm on the Moon could be detected, defended, and escaped from safely. Combining those two ingredients with a multi-country Moon landing became the foundation for my first feature screenplay.

SS&F: The film imagines a joint U.S.-India Moon mission. Why was it important for you to include international space programs in the narrative?

YG: I wanted the Moon mission to showcase how two people from different walks of life would solve a problem that no one has ever faced together, and having two nations' space programs meeting on the Moon was a unique foundation to build that relationship. India's real-life achievements with the Chandrayaan program in recent years became the springboard for a new perspective on how spaceflight can uplift a community, while giving our American astronaut a great foil.

SS&F: Are there any films or filmmakers you’re particularly inspired by?

YG: The biggest influences on this script was Ron Howard's APOLLO 13, a movie my brother (a pilot) and I have watched and loved for years, THE MARTIAN, and the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE films. The intense internal and external tension of APOLLO 13's real-life astronauts, combined with the high-stakes problem solving in THE MARTIAN and the precisely-paced action of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, was exactly what I wanted to bring together when crafting the script's blend of action and character.

SS&F: What has it been like to work with a science advisor to ensure accuracy in the script?

YG: Working with Dr. Sidney Perkowitz has been a fantastic experience that's not only helped the script become more accurate, but also opened my eyes to many new ways to incorporate the natural beauty beyond into a story centered around exploring it. In our first brainstorm, he noted that meteor showers are often part of or accompanying comets as they move past planets, which inspired me to revise the story's setup with this knowledge in mind. Collaborating with him has elevated this story so much, and I'm very grateful I've had the chance to learn from him.

Eric Kohn, Yoel Gebremariam, Vice President and Program Director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Doron Weber, 2024 Grand Jury Prizewinner Brittany Wang and filmmaker Sharon Shattuck at MoMI's 2025 First Look Festival. Photo Credit: Thanassi Karageorgiou

SS&F: The title IMPACT has multiple meanings—can you talk about how that theme plays out in the story?

YG: Beyond referring to the physical dangers our heroes face, IMPACT also refers to the national and personal legacies each astronaut hopes to leave. One man's trying to pull his village out of poverty, while the other is trying to reignite his country's interest in space, save his protege's future, and finally reconnect with his daughter. The core question of the story, inspired by the visual of our main character looking out at the blue marble after he lands on the moon, was ‘When you reach your greatest achievement, when you stand on top of the mountain, who do you think of first?’ That question is what informs our core characters and their journey together across every trial.

SS&F: What challenges did you face in writing a story that blends blockbuster spectacle with nuanced character development? Did any actors come to mind when you were shaping the characters?

YG: The biggest challenge, unsurprisingly, was balancing the spectacle with the drama behind it. Writing action takes a lot of time (and space!), and if the balance is off, characters become static and action gets stale. A core focus of my writing and rewriting process has always been on trimming action to keep it punchy, while elevating the character moments to be frequent and meaningful, ensuring both characters and their obstacles progress consistently. Tom Cruise and Dev Patel came to mind early on when shaping the main characters, given their work in action-driven stories that balance nuanced characters like MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and MONKEY MAN, respectively.

SS&F: How has the Sloan Student Discovery Prize helped shape your vision for the film’s future?

YG: The Sloan Discovery Prize has been invaluable as I quickly learned more about the industry, where this story needs to grow, and where it could fit in the continually shifting marketplace. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's support through my industry and science mentors have helped me find new connections, elevate my script further, and learn and target its continued development through additional competitions and fellowship opportunities. I'm extremely grateful for their continued support.

SS&F: Do you see yourself continuing to explore science-based storytelling in your future work?

YG: Yes! Working to fold science into my screenplays is something I hope to incorporate into every story I write. Beyond IMPACT, I'm currently writing a feature set during the London Blitz in World War 2, and while the typical focus is historical accuracy, I'm excited to build on it by researching the physical and psychological effects of the war on the home front and how so many men and women still chose to stand and fight, every day. This focus on accurately bringing science-based stories to the screen is something I'll build on in IMPACT and many stories to come.

♦

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Sloan Science & Film: What first drew you to Jane Willenbring’s story, and how did you approach adapting such a personal and powerful narrative for the screen?

Brittany Wang: I first learned about Jane’s story through the documentary PICTURE A SCIENTIST, where she recounts her experiences as a woman in science. There’s a quote I wrote down from that first viewing, where she said: ‘I look back at my life and think, did I make the right choices? I couldn’t have lived without science, but I wouldn’t have chosen to endure the same treatment again. The years of insidious abuse, and the utter waste of time and energy, when all I wanted to do was to be a scientist.’ I vividly remember feeling a mixture horror and awe when she spoke about her experiences, and thinking to myself, audiences need to see this on a big screen.

With this script, I had the overarching goal to capture Jane’s character in full: a brilliant scientist, a resilient survivor, and an unexpected public figure. I started the writing process by leaning heavily on real-life details, because honestly, the things that actually happened are far more unbelievable than anything fictional I could have come up with. As the script progressed, I focused on finding the thematic throughlines to tie those real-life moments together. My goal as a storyteller is always to portray characters in a way that feels human and emotionally truthful, and I feel that responsibility now more than ever as I adapt her story.

SS&F: THIN ICE explores both scientific discovery and systemic abuse—how did you balance these themes in your storytelling?

BW: Despite containing big themes, THIN ICE is still a character-driven story to me. Balancing scientific discovery and systemic abuse meant filtering both through the lens of Jane’s lived experience. Her career is filled with extraordinary research and momentous achievements, which she accomplished despite the systemic barriers that threatened to derail her work. Over the course of her life, she has been forced to weigh her passion for science against the personal cost of enduring and confronting abuse. That tension and balance is something that she has grappled at length, so the storytelling arises naturally from her complicated personal journey.

SS&F: You collaborated with Jane Willenbring during development. What was that process like, and how did it shape the script?

BW: Jane’s perspective was essential in grounding the script in authenticity and making sure key moments reflected factual accuracy as well as emotional truth. She’s been incredibly generous in sharing her time, insights, and memories as I work through multiple drafts of the script. I check in with her regularly, though in terms of how the actual writing comes out in scenes, she’s quite hands-off – which is both freeing and daunting! A lot of the time as I’m writing, I think to myself ‘How would Jane react, reading this scene? Would she feel seen and heard?’

SS&F: The Antarctic setting is both physically and emotionally isolating. How did you use the environment to reflect Jane’s internal journey?

BW: The setting of Antarctica easily makes everything in the script feel cinematic, simply by nature of it being Antarctica. I view Jane’s story as one of survival and resilience, and the setting perfectly underscores that. The beauty and vast scale of untouched tundra highlight the grandeur of the natural world Jane has devoted her life to studying, while the isolated and unforgiving conditions emphasize the impossible solitude and vulnerability that she experienced. Plus, the remote camping and cramped tent situation in field expeditions serve as a great contrast, to underscore the claustrophobic and oppressive abuse she endured.

2024 Sloan Student Discovery Prize Winner Yoel Gebremariam, Vice President and Program Director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Doron Weber and Brittany Wang at MoMI's 2025 First Look Festival. Photo Credit: Thanassi Karageorgiou

SS&F: What kind of research did you undertake to accurately portray glaciology and the scientific expedition?

BW: Google Scholar has been my best friend for the past year. I have reviewed a lot of research papers, particularly Jane’s history of published research, as well as the academic papers that arose from her 1999 field expedition. I supplemented this with various articles, blogs, and documentaries. Above all though, my scientific advisor Dr. Ryan Venturelli has been an absolute life saver in helping me distill a wide array of complex scientific papers and abstract concepts into accessible details that I can understand and craft narrative around.

SS&F: What do you hope audiences—especially those in the scientific community—take away from this film?

BW: Jane’s geomorphology research exploring climate change topics is intricately tied to questions I believe to be urgent today: What world are we comfortable leaving to our children? How can we ensure that the environment we pass on to future generations will be livable? Simultaneously, her personal journey encapsulates similar critical conversations around gender equality: How do we reckon with systemic failings? How can we foster academic equity for future generations of women? Telling this story not only honors Jane’s contributions to her field of study, but also invites audiences to reflect on the complicated realities of these questions. I hope that this story serves as a catalyst for discussion about necessary improvements in both academia and climate policy.

By shedding light to Jane’s story, the challenges she faced may validate the experiences of individuals, particularly young women, who have been marginalized in academic science or any other hostile career path. I hope that it gives strength to anyone going through similar experiences, and of course, that it inspires the next generation to take an interest in geological sciences!

SS&F: How has winning the Sloan Prize and receiving mentorship impacted your path as a filmmaker?

BW: At the MoMI First Look Festival, Sharon Shattuck (co-director of PICTURE A SCIENTIST, also a Sloan-supported project) presented me with the Grand Jury Prize. It was such an incredible full circle moment to celebrate THIN ICE with the person whose documentary introduced me to Jane’s story in the first place, and I feel so honored to join a community of creatives dedicated to science-forward storytelling.

The support from the Sloan Foundation and their partners have been an incredible validation that others find Jane’s story as compelling as I do, and gives me invaluable encouragement to keep developing this project. Being able to lean on the expertise of my scientific and industry mentors and having their support has undoubtedly helped bring this project to its fullest potential.

Brittany Wang and Sharon Shattuck at MoMI's 2025 First Look Festival. Photo Credit: Thanassi Karageorgiou

SS&F: Are there other filmmakers or films you’re particularly inspired by?

BW: During the writing process, I drew inspiration from ERIN BROCKOVICH, OPPENHEIMER, and THE SOCIAL NETWORK – films that explore complex individuals navigating personal ambition and powerful institutions, set against the backdrop of scientific discovery and courtroom justice. They are smartly written, visually compelling, and filled with sharp dialogue. What unites these films, and what I hope to capture in THIN ICE is an emotional complexity within characters. I think that some of the best films are sweeping in scope and socially resonant, but still driven by imperfect characters.

SS&F: What’s next for THIN ICE?

BW: THIN ICE began as a pilot for a limited series, and I am currently adapting the script into a feature for a more focused narrative arc and expanded opportunities for independent production. I’m wrapping up the latest draft to refine the structure, tone, and character nuances – shaped by ongoing creative dialogue with both Jane and my advisors at MoMI and Sundance. Once that is complete, I hope to assemble a creative team and partner with producers who share my vision for THIN ICE, to ultimately ensure that Jane’s story reaches the screen with authenticity and care.

♦

• Winners of the 2024 Sloan Student Prizes Announced
• 2025 Sloan Sundance Winners Announced
• Meet the Filmmaker: Justine Beed on LA FORZA

As announced in Deadline, Mehrel is one of six writers selected for the 2025 Episodic Lab, which runs in person from August 11–22 in Los Angeles. The Lab offers individualized story and career development, pairing fellows with experienced showrunners and creative producers. Netflix, the founding sponsor, provides additional mentorship opportunities with showrunners from its slate of series.

This is Mehrel’s second grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Her short film THE LONELIEST, which explores themes of isolation and connection through a science-informed lens, was supported by a 2014 Sloan Production Grant at NYU and premiered in 2020. The film follows a deep-sea diver who discovers a mysterious signal from the ocean’s depths—possibly from the loneliest whale in the world. The project exemplifies a signature blend of poetic storytelling and scientific curiosity common the Sloan-supported projects. Read more about Mehrel’s new pilot BADDIES and her short film THE LONELIEST before streaming it here.

BADDIES (Pilot)
Written by Lilian Mehrel
Logline: A (romantic) comedy series about the team who works at Baddies — a dating app using behavioral science to undo their bad rap, beat the competition, oh and help people find love. If they can figure it out for themselves first.

THE LONELIEST (Short Film)
Written, directed, produced, and edited by Lilian Mehrel
Logline: Go ‘behind-the-scenes’ of British nature show Ocean Discovery in this tragicomic mockumentary: Violet (a camera-girl with a wry sense of humor) and Ingrid (a marine biologist with a singular passion for whales) go looking for the loneliest whale in the world (with a voice too high for the others to hear).

FIRST PLACE ($20,000):

SLEDHEAD by Ellie Melick
When her cousin — and hero — loses a long battle with mental illness, U.S.A. Skeleton athlete Ingrid Anderson puts her Olympic dreams on the line to help neurological researchers investigate how sliding sports damage the brain.

SECOND PLACE (TIE) ($10,000 EACH):

BITE by EmElise Knapp
When Daria Harding's Broadnose Sevengill shark research is under attack, she must adapt like the very species she is trying to protect. Daria has two choices: Swim away and abandon years of dedicated discovery, or bite back.

ODE TO JOPLIN by Hannah Honey Shepard
National Weather Service Meteorologist Maggie Guthrie must confront her estranged family when she returns home to Joplin, Missouri to survey the damage of the 2011 EF5 tornado. Can a brush with death bring new perspective, and repair the relationship of a broken southern evangelical family?

THIRD PLACE (TIE) ($5,000 EACH):

BENEATH THE SURFACE by Kate Isabel Foley
Unmoored by the sudden death of her younger sister, analytical chemist Nessa Brodie must reckon with her grief in order to make sense of the corpses she faces every day in her work at the Virginia “body farm” — and to find her big breakthrough before funding runs out.

MOTHER BEAR by Sondai NaNaBuluku
Malakai, a grief-stricken fish-out-of-water from Florida, is confronted by the plight of arctic-related climate change in Churchill, Manitoba. Here, he must aid a team of Polar Bears International researchers in the hope that tagging regional polar bears will heal the environment and himself.

• Sloan Film Update: New Winners from Carnegie Mellon University
• New Sloan Grantees at CMU
• Meet the Filmmaker: Dan Giles

ISOTOPES by Anika Hundal
ISOTOPES is a one-hour drama series with mother-and-daughter pair Marie and Irène Curie at its heart. Though much attention has been paid to the scientific work of these two women individually, and alongside their husbands — both couples eventually winning Nobel Prizes in Chemistry — little has focused on their relationship with each other.

THE INVISIBLE CITY by Matthew Evans
In 1850s Victorian London, a maverick physician and his young mentee struggle against church, state, and superstition to save the people of Soho from the cholera epidemic. Inspired by the true story of John Snow.

• Marie Curie, A Noble Affair: Interview with Kathryn Maughan
• From Book to Stage to Screen: The National Theatre
• Funding the Universal Language: Interview with Sloan's Doron Weber

Science & Film: How did you arrive at lucid dreaming as a central plot point for this story?

Nacho Vigalondo: I remember many, many years ago, I was thinking, what if you have a dream in a movie and the conclusion of the movie happens within that dream? What if you start a movie with a character and in the midpoint, that character has a dream, and we stay for the rest of the movie within the dream? What if you have a flashback and the movie ends within the flashback? What if we break the narrative for real? I have a ton of ideas like that. They are these kind of abstract jokes, not like real premises, but they are just sitting there in case anything works for me at any time.

It wasn't until I wanted to talk about grief and depression and addiction—those three things combined, coming, of course, from personal experiences—it wasn't until that time that I came up with the idea: what if we can escape from all those states of mind through dreams, through dreams that actually kind of happen narratively because the character is building them. But what if there are consequences? So, as you can see, lucid dreams, they are not the starting point, but they become a beautiful way to describe everything I need. Lucid dreams are a tool to make the movie more specific and less abstract.

I think the fact that lucid dreams are real, and the fact that some people are able to achieve that is, for me, it's mind blowing. Because it's like living within science fiction. I guess we are already living in a science fiction reality, because we have the AI thing, which we kind of get used really quick, which is something that fascinates me. Like, if the aliens suddenly come by and say hi, we will get used to that in hours. And to me, the fact that some people can have the discipline to achieve lucid dreams, which means an alternate reality by design, is for me, mind-blowing.

S&F: Have you ever tried?

NV: There's no way I can try. Let's put it this way: if ADHD was a can of beans, my face would be on the sticker. I was recently diagnosed, and all the questions were answered. My brain only accepts discipline under really, really specific circumstances. Once I heard that you need to do some mental exercises in order to make lucid dreams, I knew instantly that it was impossible for me. I don't even have normal dreams. I don't even remember them. Just a bunch of them all my life [I have remembered].

It's kind of sad. It's night, I go to bed, and my brain has unlimited budget for me to enjoy. This is not a joke. This is real. I never had what you human beings call a wet dream, never, ever. But I remember like a couple of dreams in which everything is pointing to that direction, but I wake up right before anything happens. So it's like my brain is flipping the bird on me. I don't actually know what dreams are, but I know they hate me. I know they have no meaning in the way some people try to interpret them.

Courtesy of TIFF

S&F: In the film, Henry’s character begins trying to figure out some of the logic in the dream world. For you, in terms of the writing, did you want to define the logic of the dream world?

NV: There was a dialog that was cut in the film because it felt like too many words, and it was about this character saying, this is like the opposite of a dream, because a dream is just like this chaotic dive into the subconscious, and everything is made out of symbols. When I try to describe dreams to myself, I think of the movie FANTASIA—it's pure, irrational things thrown at your senses. But here we're doing the opposite.

One person in the audience asked, tell me about the dream logic in this film. There is a lack of dream logic, because he's like turning the dream world into a parking lot. It's kind of sad in that way. This guy is using the dream world to make it become like the everyday; normal life, my flat, my street, my girlfriend, my everything. Initially, he's not falling into the temptation of going through a power fantasy thing. He's not becoming a superhero, he's just trying to reach what he lacks the most, which is a normal existence, which I felt was really interesting. Using this kind of alternate universe so we can reach the mundane. That was really important for me at the beginning of the process. So, the rules had to be kind of boring.

S&F: Can you talk about the two modes that you film in, to distinguish between dream world and reality?

NV: The dreams are shot with the same cameras and the same tapes that I used when I was a teenager, and I was directing short films. When you are in your mid 20s and you are starting to think of yourself as a filmmaker, and you use these cameras, it was my case and many, many, guys around me, we were trying to disguise the signal into a movie. Putting in the black bars, using the lighting in a way that kind of reminds you of an American feature film… As years go by, you look back and you realize that, oh my god, the real property of those cameras, they do not have the property of celluloid, they don't have the property of the digital element, this is a completely different thing, and the nature of what you're shooting is completely different. I just realized now in my late 40s, that I have a fetishistic attraction to magnetic tapes. People tend to think about the distance between celluloid and digital. This is the other angle. If you shoot something on a magnetic tape, you are moving away from digital. You're moving away from celluloid in a similar way. And for me, being able to deal with those two radically different film stocks was amazing.

Courtesy of TIFF

S&F: Did you work with the same DP for both modes of shooting?

NV: Yeah. He was so excited, too. Because the aspect ratio in the film changes all the time, some people think that is a decision that we made. That is not actually a decision, because when you shoot with these old-fashioned cameras, that's a full signal. So that's a limitation, and I love it as a limitation. I feel that as a decision, changing the aspect ratio is not a novelty anymore. We have seen that many times in recent films. But to having that imposed by the cameras that you're using, that is really exciting.

We're shooting the same guy, with the same clothes, in the same flat, I just needed the camera itself to create the sense of a completely different universe. It would be okay to just change the color temperature or the texture of the image itself. It would be okay to play with filters and everything, so we know where we are. But in this case, what's in front of camera is exactly the same.

S&F: Lastly, I wanted to ask you about the casting. The film is shot in Madrid but it stars two people who are foreigners. Did that come from the casting, or was that part of the story to begin with?

NV: When you write a movie, you don't know if it's going to be made, first of all. You don't know if it's going to be a small production made with a few people or if it's going to become an international film. I never expect the movie to have any specific size. I always have budget in mind. I always try to stick to few locations, and I don't want to go crazy with the VFX needed. So the way I wrote it, it could be a couple in New York or maybe in Toronto or in Madrid, but once the cast becomes real, you always go back to the script, and you adapt the script to the to the cast. And in this case, it was like, okay, it seems like the movie is going to be English language. Because of tax bullshit things, it's going to be better for us if we shoot in Madrid—I prefer to shoot in Madrid, because I know the city. I felt to myself that it's so easy to turn the characters into strangers in a city that they don't know. Oh, my God, that's Stephen King. I am the biggest fan; I am so happy.

S&F: Do you want go say hi?

NV: No, no, no, no no. I would never bother him. I love him. Even as a person, not only as a writer, I love him. I love to listen to him. So where was I?

S&F: It was easy to turn the characters into strangers...

NV: If I work hard at turning the story into one about these characters who can stay Madrid for a reason, and they are kind of lost in the city for these different reasons. And they find each other, then I can add the way each one of them relates to the city. And then, as the movie goes on, the fact that they are isolated in the city means that they are isolated in a different Madrid within Henry's dream. And you know what? If they are, let's say, foreigners in Spain, all the other characters they can speak in English without pretending to have the perfect accent. That was, for me, perfect, because it's allowing people to be natural on screen.

♦

• 2024 TIFF Sloan Science on Film Showcase
• Science Films at TIFF 2024
• 2024 TIFF Sloan Science and Technology Project Pitch

The result is a movie that’s constantly feeling out the distances between stars and between people, while folding in the rich history and culture of the scientific pursuit. A trip that Karl takes to Greece reveals an unexpected resonance with the earliest discoveries of an ancient philosopher, and Sarah’s date with a young Ecuadorian astronomer, Mateo (Mario Silva), brings the film to the story of an abandoned telescope in New Jersey and then the history of scientists in the state after World War II. There are added meta layers to the film: Rindland and Thornton are both filmmakers whose work explores the sciences, and Cohen’s own young son supplies a remarkably detailed voiceover about the moon.

LITTLE, BIG, AND FAR premiered at the New York Film Festival and begins a theatrical run on July 11. I spoke with Cohen about the spirit of discovery and delicate web of emotional connections within the film; the real-life scientists that inform its fictional fabric; and how changing times have made LITTLE, BIG, AND FAR feel urgent in ways he hadn’t intended.

What led you to the character of Karl?

One of the initial primary concerns was to make a scientist character who was fully living in this world and having to deal with what we all have to deal with—but who has also spent their life teaching and researching, in a sense, in the stars. And I wanted there to be at least a few fragments of science that would be of interest to scientists, but of course, I was trying to make a movie for everyone. There are films that are specifically about activist propositions in regards to some crisis or problem, but I was trying to do something that was in a way parallel to MUSEUM HOURSin the sense that there the museum guard is a kind of fulcrum between the public and the institution. Karl, Sarah, and his wife, Eleanor, are all people who are in a sense grappling with how to live as research people and science people and museum people, but also people who have to talk science, who have to explicate to a broader audience, which is something that many scientists have to do.

There’s a new, existential urgency to the scientific pursuit and to museums in the current political climate. Was that on your mind as well?

Oh, very much. Museums were in crisis before Trump, in the sense that museums are generally speaking research institutions and so there's this extraordinary realm that the public doesn't encounter where the museums are actually doing art history or active preservation or scientific research. And museums were also facing the collective soul-searching that much of the culture underwent in regards to certainly race and gender, but also colonialism and history. What they weren't necessarily counting on was that they'd be catching hell from all sides. The threat is substantially worse now in terms of ignorance, funding removal, and the overall attack on scientific premise. What we're experiencing now is a basic retreat from scientific thinking as an understood necessity and a boon.

I didn't expect the film to be quite as pertinent as it has unfortunately become. I wanted to touch on all of these areas, but it almost pains me that people might think I made it a month ago trying to be au courant. I thought, “Are people going to feel like I'm overdoing it a little bit, when Karl has this rant about dark skies?” But things like fossil fuel expansion in desert areas are just a nightmare for observatories. And astronomers are pissed off about Starlink: it's fouling up their data and it's fouling up their observation.

But I don't like to make movies that are just about topics or problems or crises. What I was really most after was to maintain a sense of awe which is still primary for these people, for children, and for many people who are trying to maintain their sanity in dark times. Being able to take a walk in the woods or look at the sky or enjoy the bounty of these incredible space telescopes that are just doing the most mind-boggling imaging—these are immensely positive and mysterious realms. These are the most longstanding human concerns and therefore it's very natural that we feel the need to hold onto them.

Still from LITTLE, BIG, AND FAR. Courtesy of Grasshopper Films.

Yes, Karl’s trip to Greece brings up the ancient Greek philosopher, Pherecydes of Syros. How did you come across him?

That was a no-brainer because he happened to be in the geography that I was shooting in by chance, and he possibly invented the sundial. But that whole territory of the earliest atomists and Lucretius and these other characters is utterly wonderful. It’s almost unbelievable that they were without the capacity to have any kind of direct observation of the microscopic, much less the subatomic, but they were already suggesting the possibility of everything being made of smaller and smaller particles. They got a lot wilder than that, and some of the ways in which they got wild are spookily spot-on. They're talking about the swerving of these particles and forces in a way that really sounds like they somehow were prefiguring quantum physics and uncertainty.

Karl and his fellow scientists explore an array of ideas in astronomy. What books and thinkers went into your preparation?

Well, I read a lot. An early spark was Janna Levin, who's the scientist in residence at Pioneer Works. Her books are wonderful. I read them all, but her first book, HOW THE UNIVERSE GOT ITS SPOTS, is quite special because it interweaves her personal biography with her explication of cosmology. That was quite important to me in thinking about preserving the human element but also touching on more complex scientific ideas. Carlo Rovelli is of course a wonderful touchstone for physics, because he's very down-to-earth and writes jargon-free books that are still deeply scientific. I read a few biographies of Einstein. I read a lot about people like [Georges] Lemaître—I still can't fathom that he remained a Catholic priest and came up with those pivotal notions of cosmology, and then was able to balance those two things. But I read a lot of things that are not in the film at all. I read a lot about Heisenberg, and there are people that I just read about because they were local Austrian people. I'm still reading physics stuff all the time just because I find it nearly impenetrable and I'm insisting to myself that I penetrate it to some degree! Really, for me, making the film is always a research project.

The film also opens up questions for the viewer in the best way.

I guess it would be fair to say that above all the film is about curiosity. And for me, this has to extend to the shooting and the editing, to try to embody these things. If science is so much about seeing the unseen or using instruments to reckon with the visible and the invisible, then how can you have some of that in the form of the film? I was hell-bent on avoiding some of the clichés that I think are often evident in films about science. There are a lot of wonderful ones, but I do sometimes wonder why almost every film that takes on the universe and its grander scale, or astronomy and its grander vision, has classical, perhaps grandiose music, or alternately new age music. To me, it was an early notion that free jazz was a really accurate musical parallel to what some of the forces of nature actually are—that insane balance between utter chaos and destruction, and constant creation and balance. I mean, it's just in the last 30 years or so that everything has changed with this realization that things are moving away much faster than they're supposed to be. Now they're going to know a lot more as they get a lot more data from the Vera Rubin telescope and the next step up in energy level at the Large Hadron Collider. All of these things could at any moment blow the doors off again.

The movie also explores the sheer human contingency of scientific discovery—how happenstance it can be for one team and not another to figure some phenomenon out.

Yeah, science is also riddled with failure and the things that don't get the Nobel prizes. You can't plunge into it without having a sort of tragicomic sense of accidental discoveries that jolted everything unimaginably ahead, and then the many things that were postulated and ignored. To some degree, it's a tremendous reminder of human frailty and the way in which like the industry's pendulum swing and some things get left behind—and then long after the fact, people are like,
“Wait a minute didn't so-and-so suggest that that might be what's going on
here way back when?”

In terms of imagery in the film, how did you choose that mesmerizing loop of a comet’s surface?

You can't beat that! A young Spanish amateur was harvesting the freely accessible data from these space missions, and he put together that little GIF. I just thought that it's incredible cinema. It was a pleasure to loop it and put it up against the Coltrane soundtrack.

Still from LITTLE, BIG, AND FAR. Courtesy of Grasshopper Films.

The spirit of observation in your film made me think of how art and science have a bond: they’re both empirical pursuits at some level.

Exactly, yeah. It's experiential and it's empirical. But there are also these aspects of life that stop everybody in their tracks that are hard to believe you're seeing. So they're simultaneously totally real and totally unreal. But not unreal in the way that AI and CGI are. The point that I'm making is that these phenomena are evident to us as humans with just the eyes and ears that we’ve got. And that as we step into this territory where it’s very hard to know what is manufactured in cinema and what is not, then it becomes a thousandfold more important to see things that are what the camera actually saw and what the cameraperson’s eye actually saw. When I work on a movie for seven years, I do a lot of standing around looking for a rainbow and hoping that a rainbow is going to come. I just felt like, yeah, it's pretty cool that we shot those stars with not very fancy gear.

Karl at one point reminiscences about his formative childhood experiences looking at the sky. What were yours?

I was oddly enough born in Afghanistan. I wasn't there for very long, but in those first years, I surely saw a good bit of unobstructed sky without knowing what it was. But I'm mostly a city kid. I took a trip out to the desert as soon as I graduated from college, just really wanting to see desert sky. When I saw the Milky Way for the first time and realized that you could actually do that, it's just incredibly good. And in New York, over the course of making the film, I would frequently just go up to the High Line where the amateur astronomers were often parked. And on a typical New York, can't-see-a-damn-thing-in-the-sky night, they're pulling in the rings of Saturn. It's just totally wonderful, and it's free.

♦

More from Sloan Science and Film:

• Géza Röhrig On The Tribeca-Winning Film To Dust
• Sundance Sloan Winner Son of Monarchs
• MIND-ALTERING: Werner Herzog on THEATER OF THOUGHT

SALLY was honored with the prestigious 2025 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at Sundance, a recognition awarded to outstanding films that focus on science or technology or depict scientists as central characters. The prize includes a $25,000 cash award, and was presented to Costantini during a celebratory reception in Park City.

Sally Ride is celebrated for breaking barriers in science and space exploration but SALLY uncovers another side of her life: her 27-year relationship with her life partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy. The film sensitively portrays the challenges Ride faced in keeping her relationship private during a time when being openly queer could have jeopardized her career and legacy.

The Pride Month premiere is apt, as SALLY is more than a biographical documentary—it’s a celebration of authenticity, resilience, and the quiet strength of queer pioneers in STEM.

Read more about this project and how to stream it below.

SALLY. Dir. Cristina Costantini. “Astronaut Sally Ride blazed a trail as the first American woman in space in 1983, while her personal life was more complicated. This exhilarating documentary offers a full-bodied portrait of an extraordinary hero.” Available to stream on Hulu.

• Science Films at Sundance 2025
• Science Films at True/False 2025
• 2025 Sloan Sundance Winners Announced

McNitt is perhaps best known for her award-winning VR trilogy SPHERES. Also executive produced by Aronofsky, SPHERES made a splash after being acquired for seven-figures at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. ANCESTRA is a multi-sensory journey that uses immersive media to delve into epigenetics—the study of how trauma and memory can be passed down through generations. The film’s narrative centers on a young woman who uncovers the hidden stories of her maternal lineage, guided by the voices of her ancestors encoded in her DNA.

In 2012, McNitt won an Alfred P. Sloan Production Grant at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts for her short film WITHOUT FIRE, which follows a young Navajo girl who must find a way to heat her home in order to save her asthma-stricken mother from a bitter winter storm. The film can be streamed here on scienceandfilm.org.

ANCESTRA was developed as part of a partnership between Darren Aronofsky’s Primordial Soup and Google DeepMind, which aims to explore the potential for using generative AI as an empowering creative tool for filmmakers. In May 2025, ANCESTRA was announced as first of three short films to be produced under the partnership using DeepMind’s video generation model, Veo.

Darren Aronofsky’s own directorial efforts have embraced STEM as a lens to probe provocative existential questions. His debut feature, PI (1998), is a psychological thriller centered on a mathematician obsessed with finding patterns in the universe, blending number theory and chaos theory with mysticism. Aronofsky’s THE FOUNTAIN (2006) – which was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at the Hamptons Film Festival delves into themes of mortality and regeneration, weaving together narratives which span centuries and touch upon neuroscience, botany, and space exploration.

Stream ANCESTRA in its entirety below.

• Five Film Projects Win Grants From Tribeca-Sloan Program
• Darren Aronofsky’s Ode to Mother Earth: One Strange Rock
• Aronofsky's Pi: Interview with Dr. Barry Griffiths

Academy Award-nominated filmmaker and Sloan grantee Darren Aronofsky – whose film THE FOUNTAIN won the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at the Hamptons International Film Festival in 2006 – has a strong presence at the festival this year. In addition to a 25th Anniversary screening of his acclaimed REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, Aronofsky also produced Robert Petit’s UNDERLAND, screening at the festival in the Documentary Competition section.

Aronofsky also serves as an Executive Producer on fellow Sloan grantee Eliza McNitt’s short film ANCESTRA, making its world premiere at Tribeca Festival 2025. In May 2025, it was announced that Aronofsky’s creative technology studio Primordial Soup had partnered with Google DeepMind to produce three short films which integrate emerging AI tools – such as Google’s video generation model Veo – into their creative process. Inspired by the true events of McNitt’s birth, ANCESTRA will be the first film to be released under the partnership.

SPOTLIGHT+

MATTER OF TIME. Directed by Matt Finlin. World Premiere. “Set against the backdrop of a powerful and emotional benefit performance by Eddie Vedder, MATTER OF TIME chronicles the fight to cure epidermolysis bullosa (EB), a rare and often fatal genetic disease.”

SPOTLIGHT NARRATIVE

RELAY. Dir. David Mackenzie. U.S. Premiere. “Elusive professional fixer Ash has his skills put to the test while protecting whistleblower Sarah Grant from increasingly ruthless corporate mercenaries in this breathless, New York-set thriller.”

SPOTLIGHT DOCUMENTARY

BLUE SCUTI: TETRIS CRASHER. Dir. Chris Moukarbel. World Premiere. “Thirteen-year-old Willis Gibson’s life changes overnight when he becomes the first person in human history to beat 'Tetris.' This coming-of-age story explores grief, the power of community and the rise of an unexpected internet legend.”

TITAN: THE OCEANGATE DISASTER. Dir. Mark Monroe. World Premiere. “TITAN: THE OCEANGATE DISASTEr plunges into the chilling 2023 submersible tragedy, peeling back the layers of ambition, arrogance, and a lack of oversight that led to catastrophe.”

U.S. NARRATIVE COMPETITION

CHARLIEBIRD. Dir. Libby Ewing. World Premiere. “Al is a devoted music therapist at a children’s hospital in Texas. Charlie is the rebellious teen patient assigned to work with her. When Charlie reveals a secret passion project, and professional lines begin to blur, the two forge an unexpected bond that will teach them both how to live.”

INTERNATIONAL NARRATIVE COMPETITION

THE WOLF, THE FOX AND THE LEOPARD. Dir. David Verbeek. World Premiere. “A feral girl who has spent her life living among wolves is taken on an odyssey through contemporary human life while the threat of climate apocalypse looms.”

MEMBER EXCLUSIVE EVENTS

ANIMALS IN WAR. Dir. Sviatoslav Kostiuk. World Premiere. “ANIMALS IN WAR is a poignant anthology film inspired by true stories of animals impacted by the war in Ukraine.”

DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

THE END OF QUIET. Dir. Kasper Bisgaard, Mikael Lypinski. World Premiere. “A meditative documentary that offers a glimpse into one of the few inhabited places on Earth where Wi-Fi and phone signals are not allowed to reach.”

THE LAST DIVE. Dir. Cody Sheehy. World Premiere. “Terry Kennedy has lived several lifetimes—as a Navy Seal, a Hell’s Angel, and, most memorably, as the unlikely friend to a giant manta ray named Willy.”

UNDERLAND. Dir. Robert Petit. World Premiere. “Follow explorers into places rarely glimpsed by human eyes: caves, flooded drains and underground laboratories, revealing hidden worlds beneath our feet.”

• Five Film Projects Win Grants From Tribeca-Sloan Program
• Darren Aronofsky’s Ode to Mother Earth: One Strange Rock
• Aronofsky's Pi: Interview with Dr. Barry Griffiths

MR. POLAROID. Dir. Gene Tempest. Long before the iPhone, another inventive device allowed everyone to instantly chronicle their lives — the Polaroid camera. The product, and the company’s unique culture, would launch not only instant photography mania but also become the model for today’s Silicon Valley tech culture. It all began with the Polaroid Model 95, first offered for sale in the fall of 1948. Its revolutionary power to allow the photographer to see the picture then and there would change the country, then the world. Mr. POLAROID tells the little-known story of the man behind the camera, a Harvard dropout named Edwin Land. Over a half century ago, before the smartphone, Land was dreaming up “a camera that you would use as often as your pencil or your eyeglasses.” He would also come to believe his company was “on its way to lead the world — perhaps even to save it.” Hubris, technology, brilliance, and a billion photographs a year are all part of the rollicking Polaroid story. Available to stream on the American Experience website.

More from Sloan Science and Film:

• New Sloan Documentaries on PBS
• Two New Sloan-Funded Documentaries
• The Eugenics Crusade In America

Read more about these projects, their nominations, and where to stream them before the winners are announced below.

Nominated for Outstanding Crime and Justice Documentary, Outstanding Writing – Documentary, and Outstanding Direction – Documentary:

POISONED GROUND: THE TRAGEDY AT LOVE CANAL. Dir. Jamila Ephron. The dramatic and inspiring story of the ordinary women who fought against overwhelming odds for the health and safety of their families. In the late 1970s, residents of Love Canal, a working-class neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, discovered that their homes, schools and playgrounds were built on top of a former chemical waste dump, which was now leaking toxic substances and wreaking havoc on their health. Through interviews with many of the extraordinary housewives turned activists, the film shows how they effectively challenged those in power, forced America to reckon with the human cost of unregulated industry, and created a grassroots movement that galvanized the landmark Superfund Bill. Available to stream on the American Experience website and YouTube.

Nominated for Outstanding Writing – Documentary and Outstanding Graphic Design – Documentary:

JOIN OR DIE. Dir. Pete Davis, Rebecca Davis. In this feature documentary, follow the half-century story of America's civic unraveling through the journey of legendary social scientist Robert Putnam, whose groundbreaking "Bowling Alone" research into America's decades-long decline in community connections could hold the answers to our democracy's present crisis. Flanked by influential fans and scholars — from Hillary Clinton, Pete Buttigieg, and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to Eddie Glaude Jr., Raj Chetty, and Priya Parker — as well as inspiring groups building community in neighborhoods across the country, join Bob as he explores three urgent civic questions: What makes democracy work? Why is American democracy in crisis? And, most importantly… What can we do about it? Available to stream on Netflix.

• New Sloan Documentaries on PBS
• Two New Sloan-Funded Documentaries
• Science At The 2018 Emmy Awardsa

Read more about the project and where to stream it below.

CRITICAL CONDITION: HEALTH IN BLACK AMERICA. Dir. Stanley Nelson. Black Americans are nearly twice as likely to have high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease than White Americans, and their life expectancy is about five years shorter. Why? In this special feature-length documentary, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Stanley Nelson investigates the dramatic health disparities in the US, even as scientists confirm that there are no meaningful genetic differences between races. From the deep history of pseudoscientific beliefs about race that still permeate modern medicine, to the latest research on how experiencing discrimination can directly damage human cells, CRITICAL CONDITION explores the factors behind the health crisis facing Black Americans. Available to stream on the NOVA website.

Previous Sloan-supported documentaries to premiere as part of the NOVA series include David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg’s SECRETS IN YOUR DATA, which premiered in May 2024.

Later this month, viewers can look forward to the premiere of a new Sloan-supported documentary from producer Amanda Pollak and writer/director Gene Tempest, MR. POLAROID. Pollak and Tempest previously collaborated on THE CANCER DETECTIVES: THE TRAILBLAZERS WHO LANDED THE FIRST BLOW AGAINST CANCER, which premiered on PBS in March 2024. The trailer for MR. POLAROID premiered on Deadline earlier this week as an exclusive. Watch it below.

• New Sloan Documentaries on PBS
• Two New Sloan-Funded Documentaries
• The Eugenics Crusade In America

THE SHROUDS comes straight from the heart: Cronenberg’s wife of over four decades passed away in 2017. I talked with him about designing GraveTech, his conception of the afterlife, and his feelings about AI—all of which, in characteristic Cronenberg fashion, had a tendency to blend together.

Nicolas Rapold: The GraveTech apparatus is so vividly imagined that I began to wonder whether some version might exist. But so far as I can tell, there are only webcams for gravestones.

David Cronenberg: It doesn't exist. I made it up.

NR: How did the concept of the GraveTech camera come to be?

DC: It's very straightforward and it's in Karsh’s dialogue. When his wife is being buried, he wants to be in the box with her. He cannot bear that she shall be underground and inaccessible to him from that moment on. And I had that same feeling. It's absolutely how I felt. Obviously, it's not very practical for you to get into this box, which is normally built for one person. So what do you do? Well, if you're a sort of a tech entrepreneur, you go to tech for your solution to that, which I am not, so at that point he and I part ways. I'm not an entrepreneur and, you know, I don't own a restaurant in a graveyard. Although I probably should. I mean, the way independent film is going, it might be a better career choice at this point.

And it's interesting because at one point I think people thought that somehow you could be in contact with this person who was dead, after death. And I did see it in an early description of the movie from a journalist who had not seen the movie. And the estate of Philip K. Dick came after me. They were very polite. I had met the Dick sisters, you know? Because at one point I wanted to do UBIK [a novel by Philip K. Dick]. And in UBIK there's the idea that the brain somehow still has memories and can still be accessed. And they thought that maybe I had really kind of pilfered this from UBIK. But I told my producers, ‘Just send her the script, you know. She's very bright there. She'll see that it's not the same.’ And that was the case.

But it's interesting because in this case it's a little stranger than that, which is: you are accepting that this person is dead. You still don't want to let go. And because your relationship was so physical, it makes some bizarre emotional sense to follow what happens to their physical body. And so that’s basically it. And I had that feeling, but what I did about it was to make a movie.

NR: So there are no secret cameras in a grave.

DC: No. Although I do have a piece of sidewalk in Canada's Walk of Fame, and I really said, when I die, you should put me under that stone and use some Lucite or something that you can see through, so that people can watch me decay as they walk over me.

NR: They said yes, of course?

DC: Well, they haven't said no.

NR: I also wanted to ask about how religious belief, Jewish belief, fits into this. There’s a line at one point in THE SHROUDS about going to heaven.

DC: The idea was that the soul goes to heaven—the soul which does look like a cicada in my view. You see that at the beginning. The soul does not want to leave the body because the soul has lived in the body and so is reluctant to leave it. So it waits and waits and waits till the body disintegrates and therefore is forced to leave. And so where does the soul go? We guess it goes to heaven. This is not my belief, but it is one variation of Jewish belief. I'm no expert in Judaism, trust me. I was raised in a very secular family. But that is one of the interpretations.

NR: What is your belief about what happens to the body after death?

DC: Exactly what's in the film. I mean, it decays almost from the instant of death. There’s incredible chemistry going on in the body at that point. You get bloated, it's not pretty—and you see some of it. And I wanted to say, hey, look, this is what he's suggesting is a reasonable thing to do after that. That might strike you as rather weird, and maybe you're not going to get many clients, but you only need a couple who are very rich.

NR: The movie also definitely allows for a comic understanding of the challenges to moving on—like when Karsh goes on an awkward date after his wife’s death, at the same restaurant that’s next to the GraveTech graveyard.

DC: Yes, well, I can tell you from my own experience that suddenly you're in what has been called the bereavement dating pool. So, it's you and the widows of all your friends suddenly deciding, seeing, checking each other out to see if maybe you could get together. I mean, everybody has heard horror stories of Tinder and bad dates and blind dates and God knows what. But to experience that when you're that age, and after you've been, in my case, with the same woman for 43 years, this is kind of a shock. So a lot of the things that Karsh says, like, ‘I don't even know how to seduce a woman anymore, I don't know if I'm flirting,’ I can tell you that that's accurate and I'm not the only one who's felt that. And that's comic, you know? It's tragic when it's you, but it's comic when it's somebody else, you know?

NR: Besides GraveTech, the movie also explores the idea of artificial intelligence in the form of Karsh’s digital assistant. Have you ever experimented as a writer with AI?

DC: No, and it's funny because Vincent Cassel has played with it, and he was shocked that I hadn't, because he knows I'm a bit of a bit of a nerd anyway. I've been playing with computers since 1984 actually. But I'm fascinated by [AI] and it opens up all kinds of things in terms of art and movies. I'm not afraid of it at all. I mean technically I've been using AI for years in postproduction. For example, if you have a pimple on your face—this happened with Jennifer Jason Leigh in eXistenz, she had a cold sore at a certain point. We didn't stop, but then we had to track that cold sore in every scene that she shot and eradicate it. And that's a sort of AI, analyzing the frame and stuff. So it's been there in one form or another. It's just getting very interesting now. But here I'm not talking about when you have AI controlling the nuclear storage or anything like that. That's a whole other worry about AI. But I find it very fascinating and I'm sure I'll play with it at some point. I just haven't gotten around to it.

NR: What about the burial shrouds in the film, what was the design process for those? Saint Laurent is in the credits...

DC: Well, it really comes primarily from my costume designer, Anne Dixon, who is Canadian. It's not Saint Laurent, but she was in touch with people at Saint Laurent for materials and sewing. The basic design came from her, in consultation with me. I describe it in the script, but what came out of it was quite different from the way I described it.

NR: How did you describe the shrouds?

DC: You know that sort of metallic stuff that they give you when you're in shock?

NR: Or when you run a marathon?

DC: Yeah, and you're hyperthermic or something. If you're a novelist, you have to describe it because that's the end of it. But you don't spend a lot of time as a screenwriter describing it, because it's just the beginning. It's a suggestion and then it became much more mysterious and evocative and priest-like or ninja-like. So, it's a lovely process. Chrysalises of various butterflies were very much involved. Because you sort of go into it and emerge as a different creature. Me being a junior entomologist in my life...

NR: Did you used to collect insects?

DC: Absolutely, I used to collect insects and butterflies. It's interesting that they recently discerned that the butterfly has no memory of the caterpillar. They did brain scans. So the butterfly would emerge as though it was just born and has no awareness of its life as a caterpillar.

NR: Perhaps they’d be haunted by their former life.

DC: Well, the thing is, the butterfly has no evolutionary advantage in remembering its life as a caterpillar. None. And vice versa. The caterpillar doesn't need to know that it's going to be a butterfly.

NR: In the end, for all the macabre material, I felt this movie was a love story. Do you think of it as a love story?

DC: Absolutely, yeah.

♦

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Fittingly, this film that offers multiple perspectives on “truth,” is the result of a remarkable collaboration between two distinctive artists. Best known as an actress (with credits including SONG TO SONG, LA LA LAND, AND UNDER THE SILVER LAKE) Hernandez trained as a documentary filmmaker and has set up a production company to make microbudget films. Sloan grantee Stephens has received wide critical acclaim for her solo and collaborative essay films and experimental documentaries, including TERRA FEMME (2021), THE AMERICAN SECTOR (2020, with Pacho Velez), and the Sloan-supported JOHN LILLY AND THE EARTH CONFIDENCE CONTROL OFFICE (2025, with Michael Almereyda). With the varied experience and a converging sensibilities, Hernandez and Stephens have created a film about scientific invention that seems to be inventing itself along the way, laying bare the documentary and fiction techniques of the unfolding story so that we are constantly questioning what we are seeing and hearing, all while being deeply moved by Carrie/Callie’s emotional journey, which never stoops to easy sentimentality. In fact, the film is laced with deadpan humor and a playful approach to its potentially heavy subject. The filmmakers talked with Sloan Science and Film the day after their New York premiere at New Directors/New Films. The film opens in New York on April 18 at Metrograph.

Science & Film: I gather that this film grew from your discussions about losing your fathers. What were those initial talks like?

Courtney Stephens: The initial talks were just as friends, just sharing in a personal, emotional way. That shifted into this brainstorm about how to make sense of some of those things. There was a question about the experience, and what people don't talk about, and that fed into the tone of the film. There was an idea of the solemnity with which death is treated, and our feeling that a lot of the aftermath, especially in America, is embarrassingly bureaucratic, or indignifying, so those conversations led to what you see in the film, these very in-the-weeds types of interactions.

Callie Hernandez: We had known each other for a long time, but–weirdly–we reconnected outside of the Walter Reade Theater after a screening of Hong Sang-soo’s THE NOVELIST’S FILM, so it was very full-circle. My dad had probably passed away six months prior to that, and that spawned conversations between Courtney and I of her losing her father and then discovering that we both had eccentric father figures with complicated relationships, and then we started talking about how idiotic the bureaucracy makes you feel afterwards and how complicated it is and how there was a comfort, especially for me in that moment to be able to talk very openly about it and to laugh about it in ways that only people who have lost fathers can understand. I think that's where that conversation started.

I was renting a house and making a bunch of films there. I said to Courtney, maybe we should make a dead dad's film. And then that's how that started.

S&F: What is so amazing to me about the film is that the subject of the film is so connected to what you're doing with self-reflexivity. It’s a film about performance and about invention. The word invention can mean so many things, including the invention of identity. The issues that make it complicated to figure out who your parent is are connected to the issues you explore about telling stories on film.

CS: Yeah. This isn't something we've talked a lot about, but I think we would both say that our fathers were performers. Callie’s dad was on TV, and mine was a business guy and very public and extroverted. We both had the fallout of having fathers who were very public-facing, and we knew the intimate parts and those weren’t always the same. This idea of the surface of the person versus the unknowability of the person was part of the process that you see in the film of, like, seeking out people who are reflecting back versions that are not compatible with one another. We have this inside line because I think as a daughter of a father, that's a very unique relationship.

S&F: We learn more about Callie’s father in this film. I guess a big question about him is just like, what did he actually believe? How much was a knowing performance?

CH: I think he really believed in what he was doing. After he died, my sister and I found all these machines. He did not invent anything, but he was very into any kind of lasers, and energetic healing things. He was very mercurial and went through a number of different identities as a doctor. He started as an ER doctor for ten years and then he opened his own practice and it was more Chinese-medicine based and herbal-based. And then all of a sudden he was a hypnotist and then it got more and more eccentric, with a very niche part of medical technology that he was really into, especially by the end of his life.

The dialogue in the film about how he was working for a pyramid scheme outside of Utah, and using lasers to heal feral cats is true. That really was what he was interested in by the end of his life. He parked his trailer on his girlfriend's land, and that was where he was at. What he believed was very multifaceted, you know, but it just grew into this larger thing. And I know he fully believed in what he was doing.

CS: And I think that's the thing about a family member, when you love someone. Outside people, when they talk about the film, ask ‘is the machine a scam.’ At some level, when you’re a family member, you’re not that connected to that question. You understand a person's optimism and their kind need to feel like a visionary. It's sort of, you know, disconnected. It's almost like your ethical mind can disconnect and go fully into a compassion and frustration in the person that you love

S&F: Sure, a disconnect between the loved one you know, and the way the world sees them. Your character is grappling with that from the start. You’ve said that your performance is sort of wooden early in the film, but that felt so right for the character.

CH: Well, it was.

CS: It feels protective.

CH: It was. I approached it more as a filmmaker, not necessarily as an actor. Everything was so experiential for me to re-experience because it was very familiar. There is a sort of wooden-ness and quality of being protective of yourself. When you grow up in that kind of environment with a lot of eccentrics running around a lot of the times, and sometimes it works out for my dad and sometimes it doesn't… Sometimes he screws other people over or whatever. I was very protected even as a child, I guess. It felt experiential, not necessarily even intentional. It just felt like you just can't be that porous in situations like that. And you're protecting what you just don't know. You're not sure. There's a trepidation that comes with that and a closed-offness. And I knew that it would probably blossom more and more into a vulnerability because that's what happens. That's what happened for me, anyways.

Some feedback that I got last night; my dad was born deaf in one ear, and you can see on a large screen that it's messed up and I never noticed it. So many people came up to me afterwards and they said, ‘Was your dad's ear a deformity from the machine?’ I thought, ‘Wow, there's all these spinoff conspiracies happening. It’s so interesting.’ He was born deaf in one ear with a small ear and in the 1950s they took a huge piece of his skin off of his neck and there's this big scar and wrapped it around, I guess, to help with the optics, but also to funnel the sound a little more in some weird way. That's what he said. I don't know what's true or not true, to be honest. There's a lot of mystery around my dad's family. No, it's not a deformity from the machine, but that's so interesting that that's where people went with it.

S&F: When you bring up the idea of mystery, the film is built in a way that makes everything seem mysterious. Right at the beginning, you make us very aware of the mechanics of the fiction that we're seeing. In the first shot, you are seeing a church organ, and the music is suddenly changed. You realize that this is how a movie soundtrack works. So many choices in the film make us think about what we’re seeing and hearing. Could you talk about how that evolved? You obviously had archival material to work with, but you took an approach to narrative that really lets the viewer question everything they're seeing.

CH: I think that's why I keep using the word experiential. Because when we decided to make the film, I had the archival material and I wanted to make a film with it. I was really obsessed with this particular machine that my dad had, just because it felt like a weird portal or something. Then when we started doing this, I didn't realize that was going to be the film.

I have a varied approach to it. You know, some things I think are true and some things I'm not so sure. Some things I definitely know I don't believe in. It was really enlightening, watching it on the big screen last night, to see how much this collaboration was able to bring in different perspectives. We definitely didn't want to make a single-perspective film.

We talked a lot about conspiracy as a container for grief. The intention was that Carrie would be a sort of absorber of material, not a detective, although we did play with that a little bit. She was more just like a listener. She was gathering memories through other people's perspectives.

S&F: You [Courtney] have done a few collaborations in a row and the act of collaboration feels crucial here. Because there's not one perspective.

CS: The subject is sort of about the incongruency of angles on a person or angles on a situation. Documentaries can hold that kind of plurality of point of view. But people are grumpier about it. I think that there's pressure for the film to take a stand in nonfiction. I think that what was really liberating in the fiction world is people can have discussions where there's no resolution to the discussion. It's about rattling off each other, with different discourses or different emotional states.

We got a question last night in the Q&A that was pushing towards asking where the film stands on certain issues that arise in the film. I feel the film is really about the fact that, just on a political level, we're swimming in this stuff. We're swimming in media and angles on healthcare, the stakes of healthcare, and all this kind of stuff. It was really liberating to be in a space where that stuff could all just be like a pinball machine.

S&F: It is very weird now to be in a world where everything is a conspiracy theory, even whether people should take vaccines.

CH: The RFK era.

CS: There are people who worked on this film who didn't take the COVID vaccine. As Callie was saying, we have different histories with medicine. There was a research trip that we made where we were interacting with somebody more involved in this world. I thought it was kind of spooky and exotic. Callie was like, ‘Let's leave.’

CH: I remember driving there, and I felt Courtney's excitement. I said that this might be a little darker than you think. Then it was. It was a very quiet ride home afterwards. Sometimes it's funny and sometimes it's not so funny.

S&F: The people that you encounter in the film along the way, were those all based on specific people?

CH: Some of them were loosely based on specific experiences. That same question that was asked last night really had me thinking too. The film is not taking a stance, that's what it is exactly about. That you can love someone who's very ambiguous. These ambiguities can just stay. We really didn't want to make a political film, because it's apolitical. Love is apolitical in this way where I don't agree with my father on everything. I didn't want to talk about Pizzagate. I’ve reached an age where I either accept this person as they are and have a relationship or I don't. I had plenty of reason to never have a relationship with him, but I just didn't want that. There are no fathers anywhere in my family. They all died very young.

We could have made this a much more political film. I was very guarded when we were shooting about the fact that my dad actually died from COVID. Five other men in my family died from COVID in the same month. I felt really guarded about that because I just didn't want that to be the issue.

S&F: When you're talking about it, it reminds me of Fred Wiseman’s films, which are all about complexity. The more I see his films, the more I see how close they are to fiction. They are really about people and how complex they are.

CH: I guess that's why I keep saying the diamond thing. It’s so multifaceted and everything reflects off everything else. It creates a hologram sort of person.

S&F: I've seen it twice so far and I feel like I'll revisit it because there are mysteries to it. Each time you can get something different out of it.

CS: I think there's also this feeling that when you start looking at a subject, ultimately the human element inverts the subject into an emotional landscape rather than a topical landscape and that is exciting, I think, within the film.

CH: And truthful.

S&F: This is a technical thing, but the fact that you shot on film, what do you think that did, aside from affect the texture of it?

CS: It has an emotional timbre for sure, but I think that we knew that there was going to be a lot of archive that was digital inside the film. So, I think knowing that was ‘the real’ in some ways – the film is about the construction of things –and film is kind of a signal of the cinematic and fiction. It seemed nice to be propelled back into the film world, knowing that we're constructing a story, and this other stuff is more evidentiary. I think it differentiated the two looks in a nice way, and of course it affected filming and production a lot.

CH: Yeah, limitations. Which was nice and a nightmare. Rafa [cinematographer Rafael Palacio Illingworth] also wanted to shoot on film only, and I think we did too. We were pretty in line in terms of tone and aesthetics, but it was also a way to blend and differentiate. I think the limitations ultimately resulted in a certain candor in the film that was almost necessary. It's like another language. Or frequency, if you will.

S&F: The film has been winning prizes, it's getting a theatrical release, and it's playing here [at New Directors/New Films] but I'm wondering how you feel about what it was like to get this made in this environment. And I guess you're planning to do more productions in your house.

CH: Maybe. It's funny because somebody came up to me last night and they said, ‘Do you feel like this is a standalone work in your body of work?’ And I thought that was so interesting because I could see that is probably what the optics are. But I studied documentary filmmaking in college; that's when I made films before I ever got sucked into the studio acting world. And I was a punk in Austin playing punk bands. This felt actually like a return back. It was pretty intentional that I decided to rent that house and make a bunch of films because I had finished an HBO show [THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT] and was fried. It was this really bizarre moment in my life where I’d just lost my dad, and I just wasn’t sure that I wanted. I felt a need to return to my roots but also to expand them.

What feels successful is that it feels relatable. So many people came up last night and they said, this is exactly my mom, or this is exactly my father, or this is exactly my brother. They wanted to chat about it. That is what feels like it was all worth it. That's really beautiful and really moving, especially in a moment like this...in the world of filmmaking, and also in the world in general. That feels like we did something.

S&F: Courtney, you hadn't done a narrative film before, but this feels like an extension of your work. Do you plan to work more in narrative? This is a special movie; I feel you've tapped into something.

CS: I think it was really felt. It's funny. I went to the AFI for grad school. I studied narrative filmmaking then totally went at a 90-degree angle and didn't do anything like that. I think maybe part of that was just economic. It always seemed like the barrier to entry was so impossible. In a way, this film did have nonfiction production elements in the way we were going about it. Just finding somebody who let us shoot in their store, then involving the store, and then involving the people. There was a lot of documentary filming that I could adapt to this film, which was nice.

I think that emotionally, for a long time I also just felt safer–and maybe it was a personal limitation–to be in the world of ideas. The world of emotions felt trickier. I've made films that have a lot of personal sentiment in them, but they're not really tapping into real deep personal experience. They're more about the surface of experience.

That was intimidating, but also so much more rewarding when people get something from it. It's not just people saying ‘Oh, your film's so interesting.’ Here it's like you're working with fluids that are less predictable, and they hit people, who have this sudden set of associations that we couldn't have anticipated. That makes it just so much more rich. It was like walking a little bit on lily pads, not knowing if they would hold. It's super rewarding but I also I don't know how anyone gets films like this funded. It's kind of an act of magic.

♦

• Science Films at True/False 2025
• 2024 Sloan Sundance Winners Announced
• Frederick Wiseman’s PRIMATE

Winner of the 2025 Sloan Science on Screen Award:

MAGMA. Dir. Cyprien Vial. International Premiere. “The struggles between scientists, community members, and local politicians spill over like the titular substance that threatens the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe in Cyprien Vial’s dramatic thriller starring Marina Foïs.”

MAGMA screens on April 21, followed by an extended Q&A about the film's scientific elements with director Cyprien Vial.

Still from MAGMA. Courtesy of SFFILM.

Two other films will be highlighted as part of the Science in Cinema Initiative, including the winner of the Sloan Science in Cinema Prize, Lee Isaac Chung’s TWISTERS. A standalone sequel to Jan de Bont’s 1996 film TWISTER, the film stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell as meteorologists with vastly different approaches to storm chasing forced to grapple with a tornado outbreak ravaging present-day Oklahoma. Previous winners of the Sloan Science in Cinema Prize include OPPENHEIMER, DON’T LOOK UP, FIRST MAN, and HIDDEN FIGURES.

On April 20, director Lee Isaac Chung will be joined by scientific experts for a conversation about the science behind tornados, the viability of human beings’ attempts to dissipate them in real life, and the mutual embrace of science and cinematic artistry that led to TWISTERS’ blockbuster success. The festival talk will be free and open to the public with RSVP.

Later that afternoon, the Sloan-supported documentary SALLY will screen followed by a conversation with director Cristina Costantini and producer Alfie Koetter.

SALLY. Dir. Cristina Costantini. “Astronaut Sally Ride blazed a trail as the first American woman in space in 1983, while her personal life was more complicated. This exhilarating documentary offers a full-bodied portrait of an extraordinary hero.”

Still from SALLY. Courtesy of SFFILM.

The festival also boasts the North American premiere of Jess X. Snow’s Sloan-supported short film ROOTS THAT REACH TOWARD THE SKY, which screens April 25 in one of the festival’s three mid-length showcases.

ROOTS THAT REACH TOWARD THE SKY. Dir. Jess X. Snow North American Premiere. “After her mother's traditional Chinese medicine shop is vandalized, Kai draws on the resilience of her local community and the healing remedies of her ancestors to contend with her deepest anxieties.”

Still from ROOTS THAT REACH TOWARD THE SKY. Courtesy of SFFILM.

Other Sloan grantees participating in the festival beyond the Sloan Science in Cinema Initiative include writer/director Cherien Dabis, who received Sloan grants in 2018 and 2020 in support of her feature film project WHAT THE EYES DON’T SEE. Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, whose Sloan-supported documentary THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT premiered at Telluride last year, will also screen IN WAVES AND WAR, a documentary about cutting edge therapies developed to combat traumatic brain injuries, followed by a conversation with Stanford scientists.

• TWISTER Meteorologist Harold Brooks
• SFFILM 2024 Sloan Science in Cinema Fellows Announced
• Sloan Films at SFFILM 2024

In addition to a presentation of Stephanie Falkeis’s Sloan-supported film ELEGY FOR A GLACIER , the festival also saw the announcement of the 2025 Alfred P Sloan Writers Lab Fellows. Read more about these exciting projects below.

BEAVERTON by Emma Parker (episodic)
In 2047, adopted siblings Circe, Orion, and Electra, must assuage unrest in their climate-positive town after an elderly citizen is injured by a moose.

EXODUS by Leslie Borchert (episodic)
When a Mars Colony shuttle crashes in the Atlantic Ocean under suspicious circumstances, a shrewd engineer must evade authorities to unravel a conspiracy that threatens her family’s life on the Red Planet.

THE INVENTRIX: MARGARET KNIGHT BIOPIC by Michael Ann Dobbs (screenplay)
THE INVENTRIX is based on the true story of Margret Knight’s successful 1870 patent interference trial. In flashbacks we learn of her impoverished childhood as a mill worker and her invention of automatic flat-bottomed paper bag making machine.

RARE EARTH by Nadine Pequeneza (screenplay)
An American biology professor and a Maya land defender form an unlikely alliance to topple a giant mining corporation after a lawsuit for rape and murder fails to deliver justice.

• Meet the Filmmaker: Justine Beed on LA FORZA
• Athena Film Festival Announces 2024 Sloan Winners
• New Sloan Winners at NYU and Athena Film Festival

In addition, MoMI will celebrate the winners of the 2024 Sloan Student Prizes On Saturday, March 15, we will host an awards presentation and staged readings of excerpts from the two winning scripts: Grand Jury Prize winner Brittany Wang’s THIN ICE and Discovery Prize winner Yoel Gebremariam’s IMPACT. Directed by Yale School of Drama alumnus and Rattlestick Theater directing fellow Sammy Zeisel, the cast of the readings includes Olivia Cygan, Max Monnig Mihir Kumar, Caro Reyes Rivera, and Sam Boeck. The seated event will be followed by a reception.

Details on the above are as follows:

SANCTUARY STATION + UNSTABLE ROCKS
Friday, Mar 14, 2025 at 8:30 p.m.

Director Brigid McCaffrey in person

Dir. Brigid McCaffrey. 2024, 69 min. U.S. DCP. Shot on high-contrast black-and-white 16mm film and Super 16, this incandescent work continues Brigid McCaffrey’s ongoing portraiture of individuals who seek anarchic communion with their adopted land, weaving a rough, hallucinatory patchwork of encounters with women, old and young, solitary and collective, who live or work among the wildlife of the redwood forests and remote terrains of northwestern California. Through voiceover, the women share intimate observations of their primeval environment alongside personal stories of self-revelation, abstention, and conviction. These gradually merge in choral-like meditation, led by the richly timbred voice of the late poet Mary Norbert Körte, an ex-nun and Beat associate. Part of Science on Screen. North American premiere

Preceded by:

UNSTABLE ROCKS
Dir. Ewelina Rosinska, in collaboration with Nuno Barroso. 2024, 25 min. Germany/Portugal. DCP. Writes filmmaker Rosinska, “Geology, animals, and the human path flow together in this subjective portrait of Portuguese landscapes. Between 2018 and 2023, I came across different regions and places in this country, either alone or with a group of artists and eco-activists. The footage was shot on the fringes of these groups’ work and activities, reflecting and revealing themes such as nature conservation, ethnography, agriculture or actions against gentrification. The rhythm of the film is determined by the Bolex camera, but is rather slow and contemplative, aligning the film with the contemporary idea of slowing down.” North American premiere

Still from SANCTUARY STATION. Courtesy of the filmmaker.

THE PERIPHERY OF THE BASE + BLISS POINT
Saturday, Mar 15, 2025 at 1:00 p.m.

Director Gerard Ortín Castellví in person

Dir. Zhou Tao. 2024, 54 mins. China. DCP. In Mandarin with English subtitles. Originally trained as a painter, Chinese mixed media artist Zhou constructs mutating digital landscapes that confound classical notions of scale, composition, and visual realism itself. His latest sets us adrift in the desolate expanse of the Gobi Desert, where an amorphous infrastructure project of massive proportions is underway. Zhou films migrant laborers as they shuffle dazedly from one indistinct node of the site to another, or crawl into makeshift camps to catch a wink of sleep between shifts, his singular camera-eye remaining in restless gear at all times, panning, zooming, reframing, and focusing in movements that bear an uneasily indeterminate signature between the gestural and the mechanical, the improvised and the preprogrammed. Building to an ecstatic crescendo that pushes past the limits of the visible, Zhou’s film recasts the cinematic landscape tradition of James Benning and Peter Hutton for our posthuman age. North American premiere

Preceded by:

BLISS POINT
Dir. Gerard Ortín Castellví. 2023, 26 min. Italy/U.K./Spain. DCP. Filmed with elegance and technological precision, Bliss Point portrays the automation of food production. Artificial intelligence manages a warehouse, identical rows of burgers are flipped, and robots glide through factories; these processes are all parts of a system designed to optimize food ingredients to a “bliss point” for consumers. Following Agrilogistics (First Look, 2023), Bliss Point is the final film in Ortín’s trilogy examining the technocapitalist production, distribution, and consumption of food. Part of Science on Screen. North American premiere

Still from BLISS POINT. Courtesy of the filmmaker.

Sloan Readings and Awards Ceremony
Saturday, Mar 15, 2025 at 4:30 p.m.

The Sloan Student Prizes are awarded annually in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to emerging filmmakers for their outstanding science-themed screenplays. The 2024 winners were selected by a jury of scientists and film professionals that included Francesca Scorsese, Johan Renck, Emma Stewart, Dr. Sebastian Alvarado, Dr. Jeremy Greene, and Dr. Maureen E. Raymo. The Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize Winner is Brittany Wang for her script THIN ICE and the Sloan Student Discovery Prize winner is Yoel Gebremariam for his script IMPACT. This event will include an awards ceremony with remarks by the filmmakers, members of the jury, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, as well as staged readings of excerpts from each project featuring a cast of professional actors. Followed by a reception.

THIN ICE: In 1999, graduate student Jane Willenbring embarks on a research expedition under legendary glaciologist David Marchant. However, upon reaching the remote Antarctic camp, Marchant makes her life a living hell. Powerless, injured, and isolated from the world, Jane promises herself to take action someday. Seventeen years later, Jane is now an award-winning geomorphologist—will she risk the career she’s built in order to bring her past abuser to justice? Based on a true story.

IMPACT: On the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, an embattled American astronaut lands on the moon alongside India’s first-ever astronaut. When a meteor storm strikes, stranding his partner in orbit, he must join forces with India and learn what it means to leave an impact.

Free with RSVP.

• Winners of the 2024 Sloan Student Prizes Announced
• 2025 Sloan Sundance Winners Announced
• Science on Screen at First Look 2024

Among the titles below, we recommend Cristina Costantini’s Sloan-supported documentary SALLY, screening as part of the Festival Favorite section.

HEADLINER

ASH. Dir. Flying Lotus. World Premiere. “A woman wakes up on a distant planet and finds the crew of her space station viciously killed. Her investigation into what happened sets in motion a terrifying chain of events.”

DROP. Dir. Christopher Landon. World Premiere. “A widowed mother, on her first date in years, arrives at an upscale restaurant where she meets her handsome date. But their chemistry curdles as she begins being irritated and then terrorized by a series of anonymous drops to her phone.”

Still from DROP. Courtesy of SXSW.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE COMPETITION

THE PYTHON HUNT. Dir. Xander Robin. World Premiere. “Every year, the Florida government asks the general public to compete in an invasive python removal contest in the Everglades. For ten nights, an eclectic group of hunters confront the dangerous terrain, nocturnal creatures and their own tiny demons.”

THE SECRET OF ME. Dir. Grace Hughes-Hallett. World Premiere. “19-year-old Kristi discovers a secret her doctor and parents have kept from her all her life. Her search for truth uncovers a radical psychology experiment on a pair of identical twins that led to a global medical scandal.”

SHUFFLE. Dir. Benjamin Flaherty. World Premiere. “Through the lens of his own recovery, a filmmaker offers an intimate look inside the billion dollar addiction treatment industry where young people are bought and sold for their insurance policies and ushered into a system designed to keep them sick.”

THE SPIES AMONG US. Dir. Jamie Coughlin Silverman, Gabriel Silverman. World Premiere. “Thirty years after the Cold War ends, a former political prisoner of the East German secret police searches for the truth after learning his brother spied on him for the regime, and discovers the lasting effects of living in a surveillance state.”

NARRATIVE SPOTLIGHT

AMERICAN SWEATSHOP. Dir. Uta Briesewitz. World Premiere. “Daisy, a young woman who works what has been called ‘the worst job in the world’ – purging overtly hateful, sexual, and violent content from social media – and ends up fundamentally changed by her encounters with the darkest corners of the internet.”

LIFEHACK. Dir. Ronan Corrigan. World Premiere. “Four teenage slackers attempt a multi-million-dollar Bitcoin heist from their bedrooms, only to spiral into the darkest corners of the internet—and a danger beyond their computer screens.”

Still from LIFEHACK. Courtesy of SXSW.

$POSITIONS. Dir. Brandon Daley. World Premiere. “Blue-collar Midwesterner Mike Alvarado attempts to save his family from the throes of poverty by investing their savings into speculative cryptocurrencies. A twitchy, hyper-contemporary comedy with equal doses of laughs and panic attacks.”

DOCUMENTARY SPOTLIGHT

THE AGE OF DISCLOSURE. Dir. Dan Farah. World Premiere. “An unprecedented film –featuring 34 senior members of the U.S. Senate, House, military and intelligence community– revealing a cover-up of the existence of non-human intelligent life and a secret war to reverse engineer technology of non-human origin.”

Still from THE AGE OF DISCLOSURE. Courtesy of SXSW.

DEAR TOMORROW. Dir. Kaspar Astrup Schröder. World Premiere. “In Japan, where loneliness has become a national crisis, the film follows three individuals battling isolation. Through a volunteer chat service, compassionate connections, and government initiatives, they find hope and paths to reclaim their lives.”

DEEPER. Dir. Jennifer Peedom. World Premiere. “In the deepest, darkest cold-water cave system in the world, a reluctant hero explores a dangerous obsession.”

DEEPFAKING SAM ALTMAN. Dir. Adam Bhala Lough. World Premiere. “HARTBEAT partners with Vox Media Studios and Telemarketers' Adam Bhala Lough for a comedic documentary about AI. Follow Adam as he seeks answers about the buzzy new tech and explores what it means to be human in an increasingly AI generated world.”

SNOW LEOPARD SISTERS. Dirs. Ben Ayers, Sonam Choekyi Lama, Andrew Lynch. World Premiere. “In Nepal’s remote Dolpo region, two Indigenous women form an unlikely friendship to save one of the planet’s most mysterious and vulnerable wild cats: the snow leopard.”

SPREADSHEET CHAMPIONS. Dir. Kristina Kraskov. World Premiere. “Students from around the world give it their all in the greatest competition you've never heard of, the Spreadsheet World Championships.”

Still from SPREADSHEET CHAMPIONS. Courtesy of SXSW.

STARMAN. Dir. Robert Stone. World Premiere. “Legendary NASA robotics engineer and best-selling science fiction author, Gentry Lee, has spent a lifetime seeking an answer to the ultimate cosmic question: Are we alone in the universe? At age 82 he has come to a revelatory conclusion.”

VISIONS

GHOST BOY. Dir. Rodney Ascher. “Martin Pistorius slipped into a coma at the age of 12. Three years later he woke up but was unable to communicate and no-one realized he was fully aware. This is the true story of his remarkable journey back to life.”

GLOBAL

GLORIOUS SUMMER. Dirs. Helena Ganjalyan, Bartosz Szpak. World Premiere. “A sun-drenched renaissance palace. Three women remain in a carefree state of limbo, tended to by an unseen, all-providing system. But as cracks in the paradise begin to appear, they are faced with a choice: escape or remain in the perfect illusion?”

Still from GLORIOUS SUMMER. Courtesy of SXSW.

FESTIVAL FAVORITE

SALLY. Dir. Cristina Costantini. Texas Premiere. “Sally Ride became the first American woman to blast off into space, but beneath her unflappable composure was a secret. Sally’s life partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy, reveals their hidden romance and the sacrifices that accompanied their 27 years together.”

Still from SALLY. Courtesy of SXSW.

• Science Films at SXSW 2023
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Juxtaposing the emotionally detached behavior of the researchers (who say things like “Let’s use 60 cycles to see if we can get the same ejaculate from John…remember at 20 cycles we’re getting better erections”) with the raw and sympathetic emotionalism of the gorillas, monkeys, and baboons, PRIMATE is, as Wiseman says “a rather bizarre comedy–I think it’s a riot.” But as the scientists perform their seemingly callous experiments, all for the sake of studying brain localization, sexual and aggressive behavior, and artificial insemination, the process is startlingly graphic and disturbing, including vivisection, vomiting, and–most excruciatingly–an extended scene detailing the decapitation of a monkey so that its freshly removed brain can be sliced and studied.

The eighth entry in Wiseman’s still-ongoing study of social institutions, PRIMATE was his most controversial film since his harrowing 1967 debut, TITICUT FOLLIES, which chronicled the abusive treatment of patients at a hospital for the criminally insane. Geoffrey Bourne, director of the Yerkes center, complained in a New York Times letter to the editor that “PRIMATE is a desecration of a noble institution and its dedicated staff.” Abruptly cancelling his scheduled appearance on a PBS panel discussion about the film, Bourne called PRIMATE “a perversion that doesn’t bear any relationship to reality.” In response, Wiseman pointed out that none of the film’s events were staged. Another critique, by sociologist and science ethicist Amitai Etzioni, published in the Times under the headline “PRIMATE is Unnecessarily Cruel to Scientists,” criticized Wiseman for not following the science experiments from the admittedly disturbing phase of “data collection” to its “processing, drawing of conclusions, to their interpretation and application.” Although Etzioni attacked Wiseman for not celebrating the benefits of research, we do hear one of leaders of the Yerkes center warning about threats to federal science funding from Washington by claiming that “all research is useful,” and citing the accidental discovery of penicillin as an example of “the usefulness of useless knowledge.” Animal-rights activists saw the film as a powerful statement against vivisection and other abusive forms of treatment. (In one scene, five scientists are gathered around a monkey who has a tube attached to his penis, so that he can be electrically coaxed to ejaculate).

Still from PRIMATE. Courtesy of Film at Lincoln Center.

Wiseman’s purpose here is not to be an advocate for scientific research or for animal rights. “Social reality is infinitely more complicated than ideology,” he has said. And although his filming method, which avoids narration, and allows the events he films to speak for themselves, bears some resemblance to the scientific method–gathering and sharing evidence–Wiseman has frequently made it clear that he is not looking for objectivity. He prefers the label “reality fictions” to “documentary,” and says that his results are “subjective, selective, and impressionistic.”

There is one very useful bit of biological science in the film, when a scientist explains the evolutionary fork in the road between the ancestors of apes and humans; the former had a lower center of gravity, bending towards the ground and walking with arms as well as feet. The ancestors of homo sapiens learned to stand, freeing their hands to make and use tools. The end result is on full display at Yerkes, which is as much a prison as a laboratory, with the animals as captives, and the humans prodding, controlling, measuring, and abusing their subjects with an enormous array of tools. The open-eyed, helpless, playful, anguished animals seem much more human than the scientists, who are beholden to their technology; Wiseman captures an endless array of gadgets and measuring instruments, including stop watches, tape recorders, hemoglobinometers, oscilloscopes, frequency generators, and more. In its vision of the soullessness of the technological age, PRIMATE would make for a perfect double feature with 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.In both films, the humans seem detached from feelings. HAL is the most emotional character in the Kubrick film, and the animals provide the emotional core of PRIMATE.

And therefore, it is the animals that the viewer relates to. And ultimately, this leads us to Wiseman’s real subject–you, the viewer. More than nearly any other filmmaker, Wiseman deliberately avoids explanation, giving us films that have the ambiguity and richness of real life, and asks us to interpret and make sense of what we are seeing. Now more than fifty years old, PRIMATE feels especially prescient, asking us to comprehend a world where we try to maintain our souls while we are, like the animals at Yerkes, being controlled by technology and endlessly mined for data.

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• The Cost of Endless Growth

Highlights include the Sloan-supported film JOHN LILLY AND THE EARTH COINCIDENCE CONTROL OFFICE. Directed by Sloan grantees Michael Almereyda (TESLA) and Courtney Stephens, the Chloë Sevigny- narrated documentary recently made its world premiere at the 54th International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Cristina Costantini’s documentary SALLY also makes its way to Missouri following its world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where the film was awarded 2025 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize.

FEATURE FILMS

HOW DEEP IS YOUR LOVE. Dir. Eleanor Mortimer. “Scientists explore the mysterious deep sea to collect and name undiscovered species in this whimsical and mesmerizing oceanic odyssey.”

JOHN LILLY AND THE EARTH COINCIDENCE CONTROL OFFICE. Dirs. Michael Almereyda, Courtney Stephens. “An archival recitation of John C. Lilly’s controversial scientific legacy tells a tale of animal experimentation, counterculture, and human consciousness.”

Still from JOHN LILLY AND THE EARTH COINCIDENCE CONTROL OFFICE. Courtesy of True/False.

MAY THE SOIL BE EVERYWHERE. Dir. Yehui Zhao. “A filmmaker journeys to her family’s remote Chinese village to unearth the multigenerational story of its relationship to the land.”

MIDDLETOWN. Dirs. Jesse Moss, Amanda McBaine. “In the ’90s, a high school teacher transforms his classroom into an investigative journalism unit in pursuit of environmental justice.”

RIVER OF GRASS. Dir. Sasha Wortzel. “A lyrical journey traversing the Florida Everglades through the stories of those who live to protect the delicate ecosystem.”

SALLY. Dir. Cristina Costantini. "An immersive portrait of American astronaut Sally Ride told from the perspective of her life partner, Tam O’ Shaughnessey.”

Still from SALLY. Courtesy of True/False.

VALENTINA AND THE MUOSTERS. Dir. Francesca Scalisi. “A young woman in rural Italy yearns for a different future amidst imposing military satellites and familial pressures.”

SHORT FILMS

ANIMAL EYE. Dir. Carlo Nasisse. “Scientists and philosophers work to understand animal vision in this multi textured rumination exploring our relationship to the nonhuman world.”

ANOTHER RAPID EVENT. Dir. Daniel Murphy. “Radiant energy beams down from the sun, enabling telegraph operators to communicate warbling, earthly messages etched in tree rings.”

Still from ANOTHER RAPID EVENT. Courtesy of True/False.

GUARDIAN OF THE WELL. Dirs. Bentley Brown, Tahir Ben Mahamat Zene. “Severe drought in Chad is the context for this exploration of climate emergency told through immersive sound and visceral thirst.”

EXPRESSION OF ILLNESS. Dir. Bryn Silverman. “After receiving a thyroid cancer diagnosis, a woman becomes a relentless advocate for her health and body.”

SUNSET AND THE MOCKINGBIRD. Dir. Jyllian Gunther. “The love story of Gloria Clayborne and jazz pianist Junior Mance as they face Junior’s diagnosis of dementia.”

THE FLOWERS STAND SILENTLY, WITNESSING. Dir. Theo Panagopoulos. “In an act of reclamation, a filmmaker reinterprets an unearthed archive of wildflower fields in Palestine.”

Still from THE FLOWERS STAND SILENTLY, WITNESSING. Courtesy of True/False.

YOUR HARVEST MAY BE DELAYED. Dir. Ahmad Al-Zu’bi. “A gift of childhood archives sends the filmmaker on a quest to understand what was saved and what was lost.”

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Science & Film: To start, why did you pick a buoy to be one of your main characters? In what ways was water important to you?

Sam Zuchero: We wrote this during the pandemic, so we felt really far away from everybody. Down on Topanga Beach, when you go down the canyon, there's a little buoy that sits way out in the ocean on the horizon. We would look at her–I call it her–when we came down the canyon and associate because we couldn't see our family, we couldn't see our friends, we on our own little island.

Andy Zuchero: We started thinking about the Voyager that we sent into space and the Pioneer plaque, which was a reference in the movie as well. Sagan was a whole reference in the film. The movie starts with the first 4.5 billion years of Earth playing out with this little pale blue dot rotating, and then our existence is just this little blip. Then it goes quiet again. It was a direct reference to Carl Sagan's pale blue dot quote from Cosmos where he talks about the need to be kinder to each other and the need to cherish this one little rock that we have, this one little dot in all of space that we can't escape from, and how important that is. And I mean, you look at it, it's pale blue, it's tiny, it's made of water, and it's the only home that we've ever known.

SZ: And then shooting into space [like we did with Voyager] what we think of ourselves and how we represent ourselves and what we are, and just letting it kind of float around up there. It was a fun idea to play with.

AZ: The movie takes place over the course of 10 billion years, the life of Earth, as the Sun becomes a red giant. It starts in this nuclear winter where the oceans are frozen. We actually shot an animatronic buoy on an icy lake in Canada. And then as the Earth thaws, we find the buoy in a world that's endless water, and then as the sun gets bigger and bigger and encroaches Earth, all the water dries up, and she finds herself on this desolate, barren, arid rock. We took her to Death Valley to shoot that. It's sort of watching the Earth transform over this expansive timeline, and then to watch and to mirror the characters' transformation at the same time. The Earth is working as a metaphor for how the main character feels about herself; when life is new, everything is wet and exciting and filled with life. But as she starts to doubt who she is that water dries up and she finds herself alone on this arid rock.

SZ: We're living right now on land that used to be underwater. We find fossils around all the time. We were reading a lot of books about extinction events and dinosaurs with our son at the time too. So we were thinking a lot about what a place that we are sitting in right now has looked like over the course of the planet's life.

Still from LOVE ME. Courtesy of Bleecker Street.

AZ: Our son was dino-obsessed, and while we were writing the film he made us go to the Museum of Natural History twelve times. There's no way not to ponder your own fleeting existence...

SZ: Kristen is really obsessed with water. She has a whole water theme in her life. Her movie, her debut that she's directing, is called A CHRONOLOGY OF WATER. And she just is a very fluid person, somebody that can change and morph and move through things with force and ease.

S&F: Did you work with any science advisors on the film?

SZ: Oh yeah, that was one of the most fun parts!

AZ: Well, we adore this group, the Science and Entertainment Exchange. There was Lindy Elkins-Tanton from the University of Arizona, who also just launched Psyche, which is a satellite that was launched by NASA and JPL to go explore Venus. She's brilliant, and she made a whole grid while she was procrastinating from grading papers one day about what that opening 4.5 billion years of Earth should look like, what you would actually see. So that was her shot. Another astrophysicist, John Cramer of Washington State University, simulated the sound of the Big Bang. During the Big Bang, the Universe was so compact that sound could actually travel through the medium of space. And so there was a sound associated with that, and you can hear the echoes of that through electromagnetic radiation that's still pulsing through the universe. He managed to simulate that, and we took that exact sound he simulated and put it at the beginning of the movie to stretch the time span from the 10 billion years of Earth to the 13 billion years that the universe has been around.

SZ: Whenever we can talk to a scientist about our ideas, we jump on the opportunity. A lot of times they're like, well, that would never happen. We're like, use your imagination. And they're like, Okay. [laughs]

S&F: At what point in the process did you engage with these folks? Screenwriting? Production?

SZ: We had written the script, and we were working on the animatic. So for all the buoy satellite stuff, we did an animation to make sure that we could actually accomplish what we were imagining, and the personification of these objects and how they would communicate with each other.

AZ: It's really when we get stuck.

SZ: Yeah, research is like the lifeblood of screenwriting. Whenever you don't know what to do, you just pick up a book or interview somebody who's in the field or watch something. It just fills your brain.

S&F: The other thing I wanted to be sure to ask you guys about is the technology and this idea of sentience or physical embodiment. The trajectory of the film is quite amusing in the sense that they're essentially setting up house, and in some ways it's kind of surprising, because you're like, well, they could do anything. Can you talk about that choice and how you wanted to portray it?

SZ: It was really freeing when we decided to set it in the apartment, and to focus on the emotions of these characters and what they were going through. Because you can go anywhere, but just bringing it down to: we're all stuck in these little places we live in, what are we going to make of this little hole we've created ourselves? Because we are just humans. I mean, we all think humans are so powerful and so capable, and you know, we are, but we're also just nothing. We're also just in our little spaces, and we have to make love and life and happiness where we are for ourselves. So that was really freeing.

As far as AI goes, we always say that we used AI as a lens to look at ourselves. We read all the books, all the positive AI books about sentience and all that. Ultimately, I don't think that AI will ever gain sentience, but will be able to manipulate humans' emotions quite well. And they'll be their own thing, or their own alien life form that we've brought here to Earth somehow.

AZ: There was a draft of the script where they were traveling through space and time together in a virtual simulation meeting Marco Polo, Einstein, Joan of Arc, and all those folks. But we really made a choice to make a movie that made you feel big and small at the same time. Or at least that was our intention. The canvas that the movie is playing on is this huge journey of Earth over billions of years, but the love story at the center, we really wanted to feel fleeting and intimate and compact, so that it feels spontaneous and as explosive as a first love feels.

SZ: Exploring the confusion of the creation of a self online, the consolidation of self, how we as humans have been seen by different people in our lives in different ways throughout history. The dry cleaner sees me as one way, and Andrew sees me as another, and my mom sees me as another. But now we live in a society where our identities have been consolidated online, so anybody can look us up and get that opinion about us, and that's the opinion. That is who we are. So that was something that we don't have any answers to, but we wanted to explore.

♦

• Science Films at the 2024 Berlinale
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• HERE at the Berlinale

Highlights include Bong Joon Ho’s eagerly anticipated MICKEY 17, his first film since 2019’s PARASITE, which won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. An adaptation of Edward Ashton’s 2022 science fiction novel Mickey 7, the film stars Robert Pattinson as a disposable clone worker assigned tasks deemed too dangerous for human beings. The film opens theatrically in the United States on March 7.

COMPETITION

IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU. Dir. Mary Bronstein. International Premiere. “With her life crashing down around her, Linda attempts to navigate her child’s mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist.”

BERLINALE SPECIAL

HELDIN. Dir. Petra Volpe. World Premiere. “Floria, a nurse, works with great dedication and professionalism on the surgical ward of a Swiss hospital. She never puts a foot wrong . . . But then she makes a disastrous mistake and the shift threatens to run completely off the rails. A nerve-racking race against time begins.”

HONEY BUNCH. Dirs. Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Dusty Mancinelli. World Premiere. “After an accident, Diana suffers from crippling pain and memory loss. Homer, her devoted husband, takes her to a remote trauma clinic where she is promised that she will make a full recovery with the help of an innovative therapy. . . but the more treatments she undergoes, the less like herself she begins to feel.”

Still from HONEY BUNCH. Courtesy of Berlinale.

MICKEY 17. Dir. Bong Joon Ho. German Premiere. “The unlikely hero, Mickey Barnes, has found himself in the extraordinary circumstance of working for an employer who demands the ultimate commitment to the job … to die, for a living.”

PERSPECTIVES

HOW TO BE NORMAL AND THE ODDNESS OF THE OTHER WORLD. Dir. Florian Pochlatko. World Premiere. “Freshly released from a psychiatric hospital, Pia moves back in with her parents to rebuild her life. In a world that feels as unsteady as herself, she juggles jobs, heartbreak, her meds and social stigma as she searches for equilibrium.”

PANORAMA

ONCE AGAIN... (STATUES NEVER DIE). Dir. Isaac Julien. World Premiere. “The film explores the storied relationship between chemist Dr. Albert C. Barnes, an early US collector and exhibitor of African cultural artifacts, and the renowned philosopher and cultural critic Alain Locke, known as the ‘Father of the Harlem Renaissance’.”

PAUL. Dir. Denis Côté. World Premiere. “Paul struggles with depression and social anxiety. . . Seeking safety and security, he embarks on an unusual job: doing housework for dominant women. As the submissive ‘Cleaning Simp Paul’, he succeeds in breaking out of his angst-ridden routine. Obsessed with his Instagram profile, Paul retreats into a self-prescribed, virtual therapeutic fantasy.”

PANORAMA – EPISODIC

OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY. Dirs. Dustin Loose, Kaspar Munk. World Premiere. “Young lawyer Sven Lebert and his boss Dr. Bernd Hausner expand this scheme to private investors in Germany, developing a global network of banks, lawyers, and investors that steal billions from European citizens.”

GENERATION

SPACE CADET. Dir. Eric San aka Kid Koala. World Premiere. “When the young astronaut Celeste launches into space on her first solo mission, the guardian robot that has accompanied her throughout her childhood is left by himself to wonder: what now? SPACE CADET is a futuristic lullaby about finding your place in the universe.”

THE BOTANIST. Dir. Jing Yi. World Premiere. “In a remote village on the northern border of Xinjiang, China, a lonely Kazakh boy finds solace in the company of plants. As he searches for traces of lost time, he gradually immerses himself in a dreamlike allegory of the botanical world.”

Still from THE BOTANIST. Courtesy of Berlinale.

GENERATION - SHORT-LENGTH

BENEATH WHICH RIVERS FLOW. Dir. Ali Yahya. World Premiere. “In the marshlands of southern Iraq, Ibrahim feels like a stranger in the world. His sole companion is his faithful buffalo. But a looming environmental catastrophe threatens the only life he knows and the one living being he truly understands.”

BERLINALE SHORTS

AFTER COLOSSUS. Dir. Timoteus Anggawan Kusno. International Premiere. “In the chaotic aftermath following the collapse of Indonesia’s dictatorship, a team of researchers discovers a forgotten archive revealing a covert operation that manipulated dreams and memories.”

HOW ARE YOU? Dirs. Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel. World Premiere. “A group of animals live on a wild coastline and try to heal the ills caused by the contemporary world. A kind of rehab.”

CITIZEN-INMATE. Dir. Hesam Eslami. World Premiere. “The electronic monitoring has transformed Tehran into a digital panopticon, turning the nightmare of constant surveillance and control into reality. But what happens when the roles are reversed and the focus is turned on the surveillants?”

LIVING STONES. Dir. Jakob Ladányi Jancsó. World Premiere. “A rehabilitation center far from the city. Natasa is struggling to trust her much older therapist. She finds some solace in horse therapy. But a chasm is opening up between healing and harm.”

LLOYD WONG, UNFINISHED. Dir. Lesley Loksi Chan. World Premiere. “In the 1990s, Chinese-Canadian artist Lloyd Wong began a video work about his living with HIV. It remained unfinished. Thirty years after his death, filmmaker Lesley Loksi Chan discovers and edits the material.”

THEIR EYES. Dir. Nicolas Gourault. World Premiere. “Clickworkers in Venezuela, Kenya and the Philippines talk about their working day: they edit and label countless images of traffic on US streets to be used as training material for self-driving cars.”

Still from THEIR EYES. Courtesy of Berlinale.

FORUM

IRACEMA. Dirs. Jorge Bodanzky, Orlando Senna. World Premiere of Restoration. “A young Indigenous woman leaves the village for the city. Cinema Novo, hybrid fiction, road trip and an ecological avant-garde perspective, Iracema shows that trees, animals and people were already being destroyed by extractivist capitalism 50 years ago.”

WHAT’S NEXT? Dir. Cao Yiwen. World Premiere. “Made by one woman with the help of an AI image generator, this animation dreams up a world before and after the arrival of evil. With no dialogue and a meditative soundtrack, it embraces the kitsch and utter strangeness of images hallucinated by machines.”

FORUM EXPANDED

COBALT. Dir. Petna Ndaliko Katondolo. “Mikuba takes us to the cobalt veins of Kolwezi, where the battle for a green energy future is fought in dust and heat. As Mama Leonece navigates the labyrinth of multinational giants, she faces a harsh reality that guides her towards ancestral wisdom.”

SPECIAL OPERATION. Dir. Oleksiy Radynski. World Premiere. “When the Russian troops occupied Ukraine’s Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, their activities were documented by CCTV cameras. SPECIAL OPERATION is based on that footage, recorded at the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history.”

FORUM EXPANDED - SHORT-LENGTH AND MID LENGTH

MOUNTAIN ROARS. Dirs. Chonchanok Thanatteepwong, Pobwarat Maprasob. World Premiere. “As mountains shift and echoes from explosions rumble in the distance, mysteries lie hidden in every corner of caves, streams, and trees. A mysterious light appears as a young man and woman try to piece together the story of this place.”

Still from MOUNTAIN ROARS. Courtesy of Berlinale.

PHOTOSYNTHESIZING DEAD IN WAREHOUSE. Dir. Jeamin Cha. International Premiere. “In a vacant house, scenes of decaying fruit in a box are interspersed with correspondence from a researcher studying the kusōzu, Buddhist paintings that depict the nine stages of a decaying corpse, associated with the practice of realizing impermanence.”

PORTALS. Dir. Elena Duque. World Premiere. “PORTALS follows the course of the Guadalete river in Cádiz, Spain: a catalogue of landscapes that hide other landscapes. A collection of inter-dimensional portals (and postcards). Live action and animation fuse, creating an impossible fauna and flora.”

Still from PORTALS. Courtesy of Berlinale.

WILFRED BUCK’S WAR STORIES. Dirs. Lisa Jackson, The Macronauts. World Premiere. “Guided by the wisdom of Ininew astronomer Wilfred Buck, this immersive experience shares four Cree star stories, exploring the cosmos to teach us how to live a good life with future generations in mind.”

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Highlights include the world premiere of the Sloan-supported film JOHN LILLY AND THE EARTH COINCIDENCE CONTROL OFFICE, directed by Sloan grantees Michael Almereyda (TESLA) and Courtney Stephens. Narrated by Chloë Sevigny, the film explores the life and ideas of counterculture neuroscientist John C. Lilly, inventor of the sensory deprivation tank. A contemporary of Timothy Leary, Lilly’s experiments with dolphins made him a pioneer in the scientific study of human-animal communication, though his later experiments with psychoactive drugs would lead him to more controversial, theosophical ideas. Check out the trailer below.

COLLECTIVE MONOLOGUE. Dir. Sarah Jessica Rinland. Dutch Premiere. “This sensitive and intimate documentary, set in Argentinian zoos and rescue centers, observes the everyday interactions and strong affective bonds between animals and those who take care of their needs with disarming attention and devotion.”

D IS FOR DISTANCE. Dirs. Christopher Petit, Emma Matthews. World Premiere. “A heartbreaking, but ultimately hopeful, account of the epilepsy of Louis Petit as documented by his parents, filmmakers Christopher Petit and Emma Matthews. Alongside the struggle within Britain’s ailing national health care system, a far-reaching essay-collage on technology, capitalism and the human mind.”

ELECTRIC CHILD. Dir. Simon Jaquemet. Dutch Premiere. “A man looks to a super-intelligent AI to save his terminally ill child in this sci-fi thriller. What could go wrong? Navigating this line between hard science fiction and emotional family drama, ELECTRIC CHILD vividly unpacks what’s at stake behind questions of AI ethics.”

Still from ELECTRIC CHILD. Courtesy of IFFR.

GAAMI. Dir. Vidyadhar Kagita. Dutch Premiere. “A melancholic ascetic on an odyssey for a mythical cure, a captive adolescent subject to inhuman scientific procedures, a young child struggling against trafficking. Three fragile beings, divided by geography are united by destiny, in this operatic, larger-than-life mix of fantasy, sci-fi and melodrama.”

I SHALL SEE. Dir. Mercedes Stalenhoef. World Premiere. “When 17-year-old Lot loses her eyesight in a freak accident, her world comes to an abrupt halt. Sent to a rehabilitation center for visually impaired people, she experiences the triumphs and tribulations of life without her sight.”

IM HAUS MEINER ELTERN. Dir. Tim Ellrich. World Premiere. “A therapist whose interests lie in alternative ways to help the sick and infirm is forced to balance the demands of her professional life with those of her ageing parents and older brother, in Tim Ellrich’s sensitive but uncompromising drama.”

THE TREE OF AUTHENTICITY. Dir. Sammy Baloji. World Premiere. “Photographer and visual artist Sammy Baloji’s fascinating film essay explores the Democratic Republic of Congo’s colonial history and its ecological significance. Drawing on research from the 1930s, the film highlights the Congo Basin’s vital role in consuming carbon dioxide and shaping global environmental balance over a century.”

Still from THE TREE OF AUTHENTICITY. Courtesy of IFFR.

THE RHINE GOLD. Dir. Lorenzo Pullega. World Premiere. “The Reno, or Italian Rhine, may lack the fame of its Teutonic sibling, but it holds its own magic. . . In his flamboyant debut, Lorenzo Pellega reimagines the tradition of anthropological documentary, crafting a portrait of a place that feels suspended in time – a custodian of traditions resisting the pressures of globalization.”

LAST BREATH. Dir. Costa-Gavras. Dutch Premiere. “Costa-Gavras’ heart-wrenching yet pragmatic look at death is stripped of taboo, and instead consists of cleverly placed reminders that life is present even in death. . .Based on the book of the same name, LAST BREATH is a sobering account of human life and its end, shown through an intriguing discourse between a renowned writer, Fabrice Toussaint and a palliative care doctor, Augustin Masset.”

PANORAMA. Dir. Amie Siegel. “PANORAMA examines the journey of natural history specimens from field collection to museum display. Using archival footage and contemporary footage, Amie Siegel reveals how Western scientific expeditions extracted, preserved, and transformed cultural materials, bringing out shifting narratives of value, power, and representation in museum practices.”

PRIMITIVE DIVERSITY. Dir. Alexander Kluge. World Premiere. “Filmmaker Alexander Kluge loves to use the expression ‘primitive diversity’ in relation to the origins of his art: the first films that were made, their genres, motives and moods. With the development of AI, Kluge asks, what could its primitive diversity look like? . . . In this new age of image-making, Young German Cinema paragon Alexander Kluge finds himself experimenting with this latest tool of image creation.”

Still from PRIMITIVE DIVERSITY. Courtesy of IFFR.

SPERMAGEDDON. Dirs. Tommy Wirkola, Rasmus A. Sivertsen. Dutch Premiere. “In this colorful and outrageous animated musical, an awkward teenage boy navigates his first sexual experience – meanwhile, inside his scrotum, a nervous sperm prepares to embark on the journey of a lifetime. A gleefully gross, deceptively sweet coming of age story with a difference.”

STORM ALERTS. Dir. Bergur Bernburg. World Premiere. “Is a world obsessed with medical diagnostics and pharmaceutical prescription ready for the vivid testimony of Marteinn Helgi Sigurðsson, who defies the label of ‘bipolar disorder’ to give us a glimpse into his shaman-like wisdom? This inventive docu-drama takes us right inside complex mental experiences.”

THE GREY MACHINE. Dir. Péter Lichter. World Premiere. “Péter Lichter’s most recent essay used found footage to tell the story of a machine, conceptualized from the texts of poet Edgar Allan Poe who was obsessed with and used scientific thinking, to bring to life a machine that never existed.”

Still from THE GREY MACHINE. Courtesy of IFFR.

THE SHROUDS. Dir. David Cronenberg. Dutch Premiere. “Karsh (Vincent Cassel), a grieving widower, invents a piece of new technology so the bereaved can watch the decaying corpses of their loved ones. But when the grave of his wife (Diane Kruger) is desecrated, he goes in search of the culprit.”

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Selected by a jury of film and science professionals and presented to an outstanding feature film
focusing on science or technology as a theme, or depicting a scientist, engineer, or mathematician as a major character, the Sloan Feature Film Prize includes a $25,000 cash award. The 2025 jury for the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize included artist and astrophysicist Dr. Nia Imara, AI entrepreneur Dr. Monica Lopez, and Sloan grantees Nicholas Ma (MABEL), Michael Almereyda (TESLA), and the 2024 winners of the prize, Sam and Andy Zuchero (LOVE ME).

In addition to the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, the Sundance Institute announced three grants for projects in active development. The winners were honored at a reception in Park City, which was preceded by a Sloan-sponsored panel discussion, The Big Conversation: Breaking Barriers. Panelists Cristina Costantini, Sloan grantee Nicole Perlman, genetics professor Dr. Chao-ting Wu, and NASA astronaut Dr. Cady Coleman discussed what it means to break barriers in art and science, a central theme of SALLY.

Read more about all of the winning projects and the artists behind them below.

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Winner of the 2025 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize:

SALLY
Cristina Costantini
Sally Ride became the first American woman to blast off into space, but beneath her unflappable composure was a secret. Sally’s life partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy, reveals their hidden romance and the sacrifices that accompanied their 27 years together.

SALLY made its world premiere at the festival on January 28, followed by a reception where Costantini received her $25,000 cash award. The film will be available to view online as part of the festival starting January 30.

Winner of the 2025 Sloan Episodic Fellowship:

GREENWASHERS (Series)
Ella Gale
An idealistic young environmental engineer gets sucked into a water rights conspiracy at a shady consulting company.

Gale receives a $17,000 cash award as part of the fellowship, the first Sloan grant of her career.

Winner of the 2025 Sloan Development Fellowship:

ERUPTION (Feature)
Katla Sólnes
In the highlands of Iceland in 1972, a geologist’s wife finds her marriage tested when a wily American student arrives, stirring tensions as volatile as the volcanic landscape.

Sólnes also received a $17,000 cash award as part of the fellowship. She previously won a 2024 Sloan Screenwriting grant at Columbia University with ERUPTION, and was a finalist for the 2024 Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize.

Winner of 2025 the Sloan Commissioning Grant:

THIN ICE (Series)
Brittany Wang
In 1999, graduate student Jane Willenbring embarks on a research expedition under renowned glaciologist David Marchant. Upon reaching the remote Antarctic camp, Jane is forced to endure his endless physical and psychological torment. 17 years later, now an award-winning geomorphologist herself, can Jane face her past and bring Marchant to justice?

Variety recently announced Wang as recipient of the 2024 Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize, prior to which she won a 2024 Sloan Screenwriting Award at USC. With the 2025 Sloan Commissioning Grant ($25,000), Wang has earned a total of $62,500 in financial support from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to develop THIN ICE, a prime example of the development pipeline built by the foundation’s film program.

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In July 2024, Nic Rapold spoke to Gary Hustwit about ENO for Sloan Science & Film. That interview has been republished below in its entirety.

Gary Hustwit’s ENO traces the musical career of Brian Eno, from Roxy Music to solo rock and ambient to producing David Bowie, John Cale, U2, David Byrne, and more. The affable Englishman airs his mind-expanding insights on creativity and the perplexities of life. But multiple other versions of ENO exist thanks to the generative software used to assemble the movie, varying its order and selection of scenes and archival footage. (Hustwit estimates he’s seen 32 versions of ENO with audiences.) The open-endedness calls back to the creative technique that Eno invented with painter Peter Schmidt: “Oblique Strategies,” a deck of cards with prompts, like “Emphasize repetitions” or “Try faking it!”

Hustwit has made a number of documentaries about design, his most recent being RAMS (2018), about Dieter Rams. Ahead of the release of ENO, I spoke with him about the film’s generative approach, its dizzying possibilities, and how these affected the documentary filmmaking process.

First thing’s first: do you have a favorite Brian Eno track?

[laughs] There are a lot that I like, but I can’t say that I have a favorite. I like a lot of the stuff on ANOTHER GREEN WORLD. Obviously the first three solo records are amazing and still hold up. I like a lot of the ambient stuff too. And I love some of what Brian’s been doing recently, like the collaboration with Fred again... And I love all the songs that he made for the soundtrack of my previous film, RAMS. He's insanely prolific. He's in the studio every day making music.

When did you decide upon a generative approach for the movie?

From the get-go—before shooting, before I'd even approached Brian about it. Five years ago, I was questioning why films have to be the same every time. Mostly out of very selfish reasons, because I was going on screening tours for RAMS in 40 or 50 cities, and I couldn't watch the film anymore because I'd already spent years working on it and hundreds of hours just watching it over and over again. My background was in music before I got involved in film, and music doesn't have that problem because musicians, even if they're having to play their same hit song every single night, it's still different every single night. I had some problems with film being so static and was trying to think of a way that film could be more performative.

And we had the technology. When everything went digital, both filmmaking and exhibition, this constraint of a film having to be the same every time or having to be a fixed piece of art was gone. So I reached out to my friend Brendan Dawes, this amazing digital artist and creator who I'd known for 15 years. And he was game to try [a generative film]. First, we started experimenting using all the raw footage from RAMS, including Brian's music. We both realized that Brian would be the perfect subject for a generative documentary and ended up showing Brian a demo using the RAMS footage. He was excited to get involved. I don't think he was excited about having a documentary about himself, but I think he was excited about the possibilities around the generative film system.

Still from ENO

So you shot the film, and then did you use custom generative software or tailor a preexisting program?

Oh it's a custom piece of software that Brendan and I have spent almost five years developing. It's a proprietary thing. We recently launched a software startup called Anamorph, which is going to be pushing that software and the capabilities, and collaborating with other filmmakers, studios, and streamers to innovate this idea forward. It’s a bespoke system that we developed to do a very specific thing, which was create this film and have it be different every time, but still have an arc to it and be an engaging documentary watching experience.

I wasn't trying to make an experimental mash-up of random Eno footage. We did do something like that at the Venice Biennale last October, where we took all the rules off the generative software and just chucked all the footage and all Brian's music into it and let it make a film that went on for a week. It was a 168-hour-long film. But I wanted ENO the film to be just like any other documentary that I've made, just different every time. We had incredible documentary editors who were challenged to think, well, how do I create a story arc here if I don't know if the scene I'm editing is going to appear in the film, and if it does appear, what's going to be before or after it?

What’s an example of a rule that the generative software follows to assemble the scenes?

A lot of it is about the type of footage that it is, whether it's an archival music performance or it's in talking about creativity, or it's a big idea that has nothing to do with music, and establishing a rhythm of those types of scenes. We expect there to be a rhythm of information and story pieces in a documentary. And we give it a three-act structure, even though you maybe don't realize that when you're watching it—it has some thematic grouping that's happening throughout. One simple rule is that there are a dozen different Oblique Strategies cards that may come up in the film, and if one does come up, then that unlocks certain scenes or pivots the film's direction for a little while.

In the version I watched, we see Laurie Anderson draw an Oblique Strategies card and read it out: “Gardening, not architecture.”

Yeah. So, that unlocks certain scenes that you wouldn’t be able to see if David Byrne had pulled a card that said: “Take a break.” But I try not to demystify the software part of this, because in some ways, I just want the focus to be on the story and what you're learning about Brian, and for you to sit back and relax and watch it. Pay no attention to the software behind the curtain.

There’s this intriguing notion of the unpredictable starting points that our creativity can have. In a clip Eno talks about tie-dye and the idea that doing something “badly” can be creatively interesting. That comes right after he talks about his musical inspirations like Little Richard.

Yeah, that's a great example of what I'm talking about. I think the fact that it's all about one person also lends itself to this approach. You can learn about him and Bowie at the 20-minute mark or at the 60-minute mark, and in some ways, it doesn't really matter. By the end of the film, you'll have gotten that information and put together this composite portrait of Brian in your head.

What I'm super interested in is how do you take that approach and do a fiction film, a narrative story? We can also adapt this approach to existing films. How many alternate takes and cutting-room floor stuff happens with any new film now? What if there's a way to use all of that material in a generative platform? I want to see the generative MULHOLLAND DRIVE, because that film kind of plays like a generative film anyway.

Gary Hustwit, photo by Ebru Yildiz

Eno’s Oblique Strategies can function as a way of releasing unconscious connections. The strategy “Honor thy error as a hidden intention” feels like another way of saying “follow your Freudian slips.”

Yeah, definitely. I think part of that unconsciousness is a little bit about our brains making connections that aren't necessarily there and bringing out things in the footage, or in this case, bringing out things in Brian and his thinking. We're doing that as the audience—I'm not doing that as the creator of the film. It is a lot about how we want to try to find patterns and solve puzzles and figure out what the connection is between this scene and the next scene.

What version of the movie did Eno watch?

Brian saw the Sundance premiere version, and then he saw the London premiere. And I would send him pieces of things to watch during the making of the film. So he’s seen two very different iterations, and he remarked on it in the conversation after the U.K. premiere at the Barbican Centre. He was like, “That version was very wordy and poppy.” It was less music and more of the intellectual conversation. And sometimes you get much more music and less talking. Both times he saw Laurie Anderson. In the Sundance generation, it was all Laurie and then Byrne came in later, and there's even someone else that we're getting ready to film.

Knowing that you were going to use this approach, did that affect how you did interviews or gathered material?

I don't think it did. Other than the fact that I talked to Brian about generative filmmaking because I knew it would be interesting to hear his ideas about using generative software in this process, I just approached it like any other film that I make. I wanted to focus on Brian's ideas about creativity and how he enables it in other artists. I figured that if we just got great stuff, it would work.

So the individual sequences that go into the algorithm are edited beforehand?

Some are edited and some are being created on the fly, so it's a combination of the two. How long should the scene be? Can you have a 10-minute scene in this film or several 10-minute scenes back-to-back? Is that too long? Again, there's a rhythm. For the Film Forum run, I'm making dozens of different versions. Or I can create it live in the theater in real-time.

How would you distinguish between generative software and what AI does?

There are so many different flavors of generative and AI software. You can have a generative software program that is run by an algorithm programmed by humans, or artists in this case. Or you can have something where the decision-making is based on a model that is trained on other people's data that's found on the web or whatever, ChatGPT, for instance. Both those things are generative. One is using actual intelligence to program the algorithm, and one is using artificial intelligence to make those choices. So in our case, we programmed the algorithm with our knowledge as filmmakers of how to tell documentary stories. We didn't train the system by feeding it 10,000 documentaries and letting it figure it out.

And the data set of ENO is kind of a closed system. We're using this software that we created on our own material. We're not using other people's footage here. It's all our stuff from Brian's archive or things we shot or things we've licensed or whatever. So it is different from something like a large language model or a text-to-video generator. These other things have amazing potential but also have real ethical questions. It’s always what your motivations are and the way you're using the technology. It's not “all technology is bad.” In this case, we were trying to make a capability that didn't exist before. It wasn't about making films quicker or easier or cutting a bunch of people out of the process by using technology.

How do you know when the movie’s done?

I don't know. I'm sure at some point I'll want to stop, but there's still so much footage: so much of Brian’s archive, new things coming out from European television archives or whatever, people approaching us with new material too. And we can also continue doing new filming. Brian's involved in a lot of interesting projects now with this Hard Art group that he co-founded in England. So we'll see. It’s part of the experiment. Does it need to be finished?

♦

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The 2024 jurors were Sebastian Alvarado (Queens College), Jeremy Greene (John Hopkins School of Medicine), Maureen E. Raymo (Columbia University), director Johan Renck (SPACEMAN, CHERNOBYL), actress/director Francesca Scorsese (WE ARE WHO WE ARE, CHRISTMAS EVE IN MILLER’S POINT), and Netflix Sustainability Officer Emma Stewart. They selected the following filmmakers:

The winner of the 2024 Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize:

THIN ICE by Brittany Wang (USC)
Logline: In 1999, graduate student Jane Willenbring embarks on a research expedition under legendary glaciologist David Marchant. But upon reaching the remote Antarctic camp, Marchant makes her life a living hell. Powerless, injured, and isolated from the world, Jane promises herself to take action someday. Seventeen years later, now an award-winning geomorphologist, will Jane risk the career that she’s built in order to bring her past abuser to justice?

Jury citation: “Developed in collaboration with its subject, Thin Ice tells the compelling true story of geologist Jane Willenbring, whose historic Title IX complaint not only led to profound social change within the sciences but illustrates an inspiring commitment to scientific advancement in the face of adversity. Struck by the script’s authenticity and impressed by its narrative structure, the jury is delighted to award the Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize to THIN ICE.”

The winner of the 2024 Sloan Student Discovery Prize:

IMPACT by Yoel Gebremariam (University of Michigan)
Logline: On the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, an embattled American astronaut lands on the moon alongside India's first-ever astronaut. When a meteor storm strikes, stranding his partner in orbit, he's forced to join forces with India and learn what it means to leave an impact.

Jury citation: “IMPACT is an engrossing space thriller with tremendous blockbuster potential. Gebremariam’s script has all the excitement and suspense that define the genre, while offering a fresh perspective on space programs beyond the United States and a nuanced portrayal of the engineering that makes spaceflight possible. The jury is thrilled to award the Sloan Student Discovery Prize to Impact.”

Gebremariam is the first filmmaker of University of Michigan to claim the prize since its inception in 2019.

The jury also awarded honorable mention to Hallie Stephenson for her pilot script ABEL'S BABY:

ABEL'S BABY by Hallie Stephenson (SUNY Purchase)
Logline: A convict in the late 18th century discovers she is pregnant while aboard a prisoner transport ship on route to Australia and uses her expert knowledge of 18th-century physics, engineering, and chemistry to save herself and her unborn child.

Museum of the Moving Image will celebrate the winners at the 14th edition of its annual festival First Look in March 2025.

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THE GARDEN by Lara Palmqvist
Drawing on timely concerns of climate change, biodiversity loss, and agricultural innovation, THE GARDEN follows a passionate plant breeder as he tries to secure his family’s future by developing genetically enhanced seeds while working for a controlling socialite who wants to transplant an elaborate garden onto her Kentucky estate.

Palmqvist, who won the 2023 Sloan Student Discovery Prize, describes THE GARDEN as an ecological drama interested in interconnection, drawing links between social and environmental justice. She was named a semifinalist for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 2023 Nicholl Fellowship.

SATOSHI by David Rafailedes and Sara Crow
The potentially true story of a teenage anime-obsessed hacktivist who, after losing her scholarship to Stanford, returns home to Arizona to become the mysterious inventor of a new digital currency called Bitcoin.

Rafailedes and Crow have been recognized by the Sloan Foundation twice before. SATOSHI received Sloan’s 2023 $100k First Feature Award at New York University. In January 2024, Rafailedes and Crow were selected for the Sloan Lab Fellowship at Sundance Institute.

Stay tuned for updates on these projects as their development continues.

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Science & Film: It seems like you learned about Terry through her book, and I was wondering what it was about her or her story that led you to want to make this film?

Sally Aitken: Yeah, interestingly enough, it's not that I learned about Terry through her book. I mean, obviously we were introduced to Terry through the fact that she had written a book, but it was really that I got to know her when we were filming. And so, in that amazing way that documentary adventures can be, you go on this kind of shared journey of finding your way to each other, and this relationship forms between you, the camera, and the person that you're filming.

I was introduced to Terry via a review of her book initially, and I thought, wow, that's weird, somebody who has a hotline for hummingbirds, who knew there was such a thing and who knew that hummingbirds were in such dire trouble that they needed a dedicated 24/7 line?! My initial way in was very superficial and quirky. And when I read her book, I realized how metaphoric the way that she sees the hummingbirds is. So that was incredibly captivating. These natural history wisdoms were packaged in this story of her over the last couple of decades of rehabilitation, but there was nothing really of her biography in her book, and so that part of it came out through the filming. I didn't know anything about her personal story. When she did reveal that it, lots of things did make sense to me. But it was just such a charming idea from the beginning—I just thought, I want to know why someone would do that?

It's not full of exposition, the film. It's demonstrable how she sees the world and what her philosophy of the world is. And there's something about that as an invitation that I think people have really responded to. It's not a didactic film, you know, it is full of information, but don't come expecting you're going to get everything served to you. There's an engagement with this film that I think people are finding really profound at times.

Still from EVERY LITTLE THING. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

S&F: Totally. Part of that is probably the way you're able to visualize these birds. In terms of tools, techniques, or references for filming them, how did you approach that?

SA: You've articulated that perfectly. It was this visual opportunity to enter another world through the use of phantom photography and macro lensing. As humans, we're bound by our own sensory limitations, and you realize cameras, particularly in wildlife filmmaking, do enable you. Whether that's microscopic, whether that's infrared, whether that's ultraviolet, whether that is Phantom and slow-mo, or whether that is drone and huge aerial, that you enable the viewer to see the world literally in another way. Then you realize that so many species around the world see the world totally unlike us. And then you realize, we're just a cog, we're just part of it, it's not our view that's the dominant view. Not that I wanted to freight the film with all of that philosophy [laughs], but there is something about having an aspiration to enter this other worldliness that was there in the writing of Terry's book. It was apparent to me that that's how she sees the hummingbirds, and that if we could in some way reach for that through, tools of the trade and filmmaking, then that would be a wonderful visual opportunity.

I was incredibly, incredibly lucky to meet Ann Prum, who's the wildlife cinematographer, who's based on the East Coast, and who is actually going to be at the New York Q and A's with me. She's a specialist, not just in wildlife phantom [photography], but actually in filming hummingbirds. I was like, okay, there is such a thing as a hummingbird hotline, and there's such a thing as a hummingbird cinematographer, who knew! Phantom enables you to shoot at incredibly high frame rates, meaning that you can slow the image down.

I was also really captured by the idea of this tiny bird against a giant metropolis. And I thought the snap of that tiny view to this huge view, the micro to the macro. There was something about that that felt very counter intuitive. You know, you think of Los Angeles as this anonymous, huge, I mean, for people who don't live there, i.e., me, you think of it as this huge, sprawling place and nobody could know anything. And the idea that this bird might be a connector of that, that was charming to me.

Still from EVERY LITTLE THING. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

S&F: That nature culture backdrop—to use the Donna Haraway phrase—is profound.

SA: Totally. And I think of all the cities in the world, Los Angeles is the most mythologized in film and it's been in everything from zombie apocalypse to Hollywood done wrong to Chinatown. I mean, you name it, the history of cinema is there. But I'd never seen Los Angeles through a hummingbird. And I thought, well, that has to be an opportunity. That is charming and wonderful. They're so ubiquitous in California; they are literally in people's backyards. And I thought, what an opportunity. And maybe because I'm not American, you find the extraordinary in the so called ordinary,

S&F: Makes me think of the new wildlife crossing they're building over the freeway out there.

SA: It's so true. And in Australia, where I live, although I'm from New Zealand originally, there are bridges for koalas. In New Zealand—actually, this is another film—there are huge pest eradication programs purely so the native, flightless birds can exist, or the insects can rebound. It's a wild world out there, even when it's in our backyard. Especially when it's in our backyard.

Still from EVERY LITTLE THING. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

S&F: In making this film, to what extent were you thinking about the fragility of our ecosystem?

SA: I was consciously and subconsciously very engaged with the idea of vulnerability, delicacy, and fragility. And I think part of that is, of course, the hummingbirds themselves, they are so small and so slight. I mean, like, literally, they weigh the same as a post it note. I mean, that's ridiculous. When I was hearing these statistics, I was like, what? They're the size of a penny, they're the weight of a post it note… These are the most improbable creatures! And yet, all life is precious, and all life is precarious, and we are so lucky to be living it. So I would think I was very engaged with those ideas. Not that I was sitting there during the shoot or during the edit going, must remember, the world is an amazing place. It wasn't that conscious, but I just think it was there, of course.

Again, we feel those bush fires. We see what feels like apocalyptic rain. And you think, is this how it's supposed to be? And there's something in the offering of this idea that is almost cliched now, but if you do take care, hopefully there is a kind of karmic thing, and if nothing else, it's good for you. I was so captivated by, as Terry says, this concept that you would enter the film thinking, well, that's a crazy lady, who does that? And by the end, you would realize she's a prophet. If you can take the time to bend down on a knee and pick up something that is so seemingly insignificant and take care of that thing, that's actually a giant act of your own humanity.

♦

• Science Films at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival
• Science at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival
• Science Films at CPH: DOX 2024

Beyond the titles outlined below, Sloan grantees will be active at the festival with other works. Cherien Dabis returns to Sundance for the world premiere of her latest work ALL THAT’S LEFT OF YOU, and newly minted Sloan grantee Daeil Kim’s work as a cinematographer can be seen in the short film THE THINGS WE KEEP, playing as part of the Midnights Short Film Program.

Sloan Science & Film will be covering Sundance, so check back for more as the festival gets underway.

U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION

BUNNYLOVR. Dir. Katarina Zhu. World Premiere. “A drifting Chinese American cam girl struggles to navigate an increasingly toxic relationship with one of her clients while rekindling her relationship with her dying estranged father.” Available online for Public.

TWINLESS. Dir. James Sweeney. World Premiere. “Two young men meet in a twin bereavement support group and form an unlikely bromance.” Available online for Public.

Still from TWINLESS. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

ANDRE IS AN IDIOT. Dir. Anthony Benna. World Premiere. “Andre, a brilliant idiot, is dying because he didn’t get a colonoscopy. His sobering diagnosis, complete irreverence, and insatiable curiosity, send him on an unexpected journey learning how to die happily and ridiculously without losing his sense of humor.” Available online for Public.

LIFE AFTER. Dir. Reid Davenport. World Premiere. “In 1983, a disabled Californian woman named Elizabeth Bouvia sought the ‘right to die,’ igniting a national debate about autonomy, dignity, and the value of disabled lives. After years of courtroom trials, Bouvia disappeared from public view. Disabled director Reid Davenport narrates this investigation of what happened to Bouvia.” Available online for Public.

SUGAR BABIES. Dir. Rachel Fleit. World Premiere. “Autumn is an enterprising college scholarship recipient and burgeoning TikTok influencer. Part of a close circle of friends growing up poor in rural Louisiana, she is determined to overcome the struggles and barriers defining them. Faced with limited minimum wage job options, Autumn devises an online sugar baby operation.” Available online for Public.

Still from SUGAR BABIES. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION

LUZ. Dir. Flora Lau. World Premiere. “In the neon-lit streets of Chongqing, Wei desperately searches for his estranged daughter Fa, while Hong Kong gallerist Ren grapples with her ailing stepmother Sabine in Paris. Their lives collide in a virtual reality world, where a mystical deer reveals hidden truths, sparking a journey of discovery and connection.”

Still from LUZ. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

GEN_. Dir. Gianluca Matarrese. World Premiere. ”At Milan’s Niguarda public hospital, the unconventional Dr. Bini leads a bold mission overseeing aspiring parents undergoing in vitro fertilization and the journeys of individuals reconciling their bodies with their gender identities. He navigates the constraints set by a conservative government and an aggressive market eager to commodify bodies.” Available online for Public.

Still from GEN_. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

NEXT

FOLKTALES. Dirs. Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady. World Premiere. “On the precipice of adulthood, teenagers converge at a traditional folk high school in Arctic Norway. Dropped at the edge of the world, they must rely on only themselves, one another, and a loyal pack of sled dogs as they all grow in unexpected directions.”

Still from FOLKTALES. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

OBEX. Dir. Albert Birney. World Premiere. “Conor Marsh lives a secluded life with his dog, Sandy, until one day he begins playing OBEX, a new, state-of-the-art computer game. When Sandy goes missing, the line between reality and game blurs and Conor must venture into the strange world of OBEX to bring her home.” Available online for Public.

Still from OBEX. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

PREMIERES

IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU. Dir. Mary Bronstein. World Premiere. “With her life crashing down around her, Linda attempts to navigate her child’s mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person, and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist.”

MIDDLETOWN. Dirs. Jesse Moss, Amanda McBaine. World Premiere. “Inspired by an unconventional teacher, a group of teenagers in upstate New York in the early 1990s made a student film that uncovered a vast conspiracy involving toxic waste that was poisoning their community. Thirty years later, they revisit their film and confront the legacy of this transformative experience.”

REBUILDING. Dir. Max Walker-Silverman. World Premiere. “After a wildfire takes the family farm, a rancher seeks a way forward.”

SALLY. Dir. Cristina Costantini. World Premiere. “Sally Ride became the first American woman to blast off into space, but beneath her unflappable composure was a secret. Sally’s life partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy, reveals their hidden romance and the sacrifices that accompanied their 27 years together.” Available online for Public. 2025 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize Winner.

TRAIN DREAMS. Dir. Clint Bentley. World Premiere. “Robert Grainier is a day laborer building America’s railroads at the start of the 20th century as he experiences profound love, shocking defeat, and a world irrevocably transforming before his very eyes.”

SPOTLIGHT

APRIL. Dir. Dea Kulumbegashvili. “Nina is an obstetrician at a maternity hospital in Eastern Georgia. After a difficult delivery, an infant dies and the father demands an inquiry into her methods. The scrutiny threatens to expose Nina’s secret side job — visiting village homes of pregnant girls and women to provide unsanctioned abortions.”

• Science Films at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival
• Science at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival
• 2024 Sloan Sundance Winners Announced

Read about the projects by Sloan grantees below, and access the 20h edition of the list in its entirety here.

BOY, GIRL, FIG by Kayla Sun
Aden was born with a rare condition where he becomes invisible to those who love him. He struggles when he falls in love with his childhood best friend.

Earlier this year, it was announced Sun had won a 2023 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting for the same project. In 2020, she won a Sloan Production Award at USC for her short film THE CODE OF FAMILY, which is available to stream here on scienceandfilm.org.

LITTLE BLACK DRESS by Alyson Weaver Nicholas
While on hiatus from filming BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S, international movie star Audrey Hepburn is recruited by the CIA to hunt down a Nazi criminal hiding in Buenos Aires with ties to her past.

Alyson Weaver Nicholas also became a Sloan grantee while at USC, earning a 2017 Sloan Screenwriting Grant for her script THE MARS GENERATION.

In 2018, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation partnered with the Black List to create the Sloan Foundation Fellowship. Screenwriters applying to the Black List’s annual Writer’s Lab with a science or technology-themed script can opt in for fellowship consideration. The selected fellow receives mentorship opportunities throughout the year, beyond the duration of the lab itself. As reported by Deadline in October, the six 2024 Writer’s Lab participants were selected from a pool of over 1,700 submissions. Science & Film can announce that scientist-turned-screenwriter Danny Hogan has been named the 2024 Sloan Foundation Fellow. Read more about Danny’s winning script below.

THE PRESERVE by Danny Hogan
An AWOL soldier is hired to guide a conservation expedition deep into the treacherous post-war jungles of Cambodia in search of its last remaining tiger, but they encounter a vicious animal trafficking operation that is after the same prize.

• Script About the Surgeon Behind Mütter Museum Wins Sloan Prize
• Sloan Grantees on the 2024 GLAAD List
• Sloan Grantees on the 2022 Black List

I spoke with Herzog recently about his film, technological wonders, and the innumerable issues raised in his probing discussions. THEATER OF THOUGHT was developed with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and opens December 13 at Film Forum.

Your films often explore human experience that’s beyond rational explanation. But in your memoir, you write that one of your earliest projects was about plasma fuel, for WQED in Pittsburgh, so the forefront of science is clearly a longstanding interest.

I’ve always been fascinated by the questions of science, and in the case of NASA, of course, the exploration of the universe. With THEATER OF THOUGHT, it is about who are we, how do we function, how do we understand ourselves, and of course, the incredible breakthroughs that have brought us to the first steps of telepathy, for example, and artificial intelligence. And questions of which reality do we live in, and just on and on. I take it all in with a total fascination. It’s like a Grand Canyon here, and a Mount Everest there. It’s fantastic—a road movie that only ends up at marvels!

You show the potential applications of these discoveries, such as the brain-computer interfaces that allow people with brain injuries to control robotics. Could you talk about the potential of these technologies for good but also maybe the dangers?

I’m showing a patient with brain damage who cannot move her arms anymore, with a robot arm that is separate from her in the room. And she can pick up a glass of water, just by thinking and wishing with intensity that the robot arm please pick up this glass and give me this drink. And we see it, we see it with our own eyes! This is phenomenal. And of course you can construct an evil side, if you have, let's say, a prison colony and you implant them with these devices and force them now to shoot each other. But it’s too far-fetched. Let’s celebrate the phenomenal advantages that we have.

THEATER OF THOUGHT explores both scientific and artistic perspectives, through your questioning. As an artist, what sort of potential did you see in these discoveries about the brain?

Well, there are deep questions that none of us can solve, and I cannot solve them either: what kind of reality are we creating in our dreams, or in cinema, our collective dreams? How do we live in a partially fabricated reality where in a way we make up our own memories? Memories are not very stable, and it's a great blessing of nature that we can embellish our memories. Otherwise, life probably would be unlivable. One of the scientists says it very bluntly, Jack Gallant [professor neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley], who looks deep into specific functions in the brain. He says it with a very clear dictum: "There is no truth in the human brain.” This is partially alarming and also in a way for me reaffirming: meaning, look for poetry, be inventive, trust in your dreams, trust in your visions. And that's what the film is all about. My warning is not to describe it as a scientific film. It is about great joy, great visual joys, and the unbelievable things you see in there.

Still from THEATER OF THOUGHT. Courtesy of Argot Pictures.

Fascinating questions of free will come up, too. I thought that was one implication of the work of Uri Hasson, a professor at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, and his experiments predicting what people would think of certain storytelling outcomes. Did this film change what you think about free will?

No, it doesn’t have to do with free will but with the predictability of stories. He tells you half a story, and he puts you in a brain scanner, and the way you finish a story shows you what kind of ending you are most likely to tell yourself. Which is beautiful per se, but I tell him, straightaway, that you might try to read my next film before I even make it. But number one, you will fail, and if you do not fail, your film will not be half as good as the one that I will produce for you. And we laugh! There’s a lot of joy going into all this.

Maybe it's a reflection of my fears, but there’s also something intimidating about reading speech from the brain’s activity with an implanted chip, as another experiment in the film does.

Yes, we have to handle it well. We really have to think how to do it. But at the same time, extracting certain things from your brain [can be helpful], like the coming storm for epileptic people. The first signals [of a seizure] could be read by an implanted chip, and the implanted chip gives orders to bring down the thunderstorm before it occurs. It is already partially possible, and it’s phenomenal. Or the power of human will: the woman who is paraplegic, who cannot move her arms, and she deeply wishes a robot to grab a glass of water. The chip translates her wish that she cannot perform, being paralyzed. And you see this with your own eyes.

It’s a beautiful reaction shot in the film, in a way—her smile, her profound satisfaction. A deeply emotional moment.

Exactly. It’s also about the joy that science can create.

Something about the film’s ending also suggests that it is a bit of a religious film in its implications. There’s even a shot of these little saint figurines near the end. What does this knowledge do for our belief in God?

You are asking me too much! You have to, number one, have a private audience with the Pope in the Vatican. And ask your own God in prayer to enlighten you. I cannot give you an answer. But of course, it stirs up questions of life itself, of reality, of perceptions. Are we alone as thinking creatures? Are fish thinking? And if so, what are they thinking about? How do they act in unison? Is that telepathy? For God's sake, we do not know.

You mentioned artificial intelligence earlier. I think that ChatGPT came out after the film had its festival premiere.

Yes.

Have you ever used artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, that sort of thing?

No, I have not. But interestingly enough, three young writers approached me. They had published a book of poetry written by artificial intelligence, and some of the poems are really, really good. They asked me to do the audio version of the book, if I could speak the voice of the robot. And I found it so interesting that I did it. But I said to these young writers, listen, I do not want to speak like with a robotic voice, like the voice we have heard from Stephen Hawkins, the cosmologist who was paralyzed in his wheelchair and could not speak anymore but whose voice was created artificially. I do not want to speak with a robotic, artificial voice. I want to speak with all the human pathos and human love and human emotion and empathy. That’s right [for the poems], because many of the poems hint at the robot’s wants to participate in love and wants to be recognized. It’s very, very interesting and puzzling. What is coming at us is very, very big.

That reminds me of another moment in the film when you are interviewing Professor Cori Bargmann and Professor Richard Axel together: you ask about “axioms of emotions.” What did you mean by that?

It’s like in grand opera: emotions so condensed, like in mathematics, that you cannot prove it any further. The basic foundations of the whole architecture of mathematics. In grand opera, you have emotions so condensed that they do not really appear in human nature anymore. They are too condensed—and yet credible, and yet you can participate, and audiences cry at the opera. These are emotions that are too condensed for our realities, for our lives.

After interviewing so many eminent scientists, you say in the film that, still, no one can quite explain what a thought is. What do you think a thought is?

Not a single one of these various scientists can explain what consciousness is. Nobody can! These are completely open questions. We have lived with the idea, “Oh, yeah, we know what a thought is.” No, we do not. It doesn’t matter. It should not alarm us. We can live a wonderful, beautiful life with friendship, and the Thanksgiving turkey, and love and laughter and a good glass of wine. We do not need to know exactly what defines a thought. It is as simple as that.

Does THEATER OF THOUGHT resonate for you with one of your previous films? Which film could people watch after this one?

Maybe CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS [2010], where you see people 30,000 years ago having their dreams and their own paintings and seeing reality in a way that is beautiful but not fully comprehensible for us. And yet they are us. This is the awakening of the modern human soul.

♦

• Werner Herzog Scans the Brain
• Director Interview: Ian Cheney on New Release THE ARC OF OBLIVION
• Science Films at IDFA 2024

Such growth yields more opportunities for Sloan grantees to find support and recognition each year. Most recently, Sloan grantees Gerard Shaka and Tamar Feinkind earned two of ten coveted slots on the recently published 2024 GLAAD List. A collaboration with GLAAAD, the list is one of the many diversity lists published by the Black List each year. (Sloan grantee Yossera Bouchtia appeared on The 2024 Muslim List.) GLAAD and The Black List launched the first list in 2019, with an eye toward recognizing the most promising unmade LGBTQ-inclusive scripts in Hollywood. Learn more about the included Sloan grantees and their scripts below.

ACIDS by Tamar Feinkind
In 1982 New York, a closeted lesbian doctor battles her trauma and societal stigma when she invites a pregnant AIDS patient into her home, forging a powerful, transformative bond.

Tamar Feinkind, an alumnus of the Black List and Women in Film’s Feature Residency, was selected as the 2023 Sloan x Black List fellow.

WOODSIDE by Gerard Shaka
While struggling to cope with an abusive father and a conflicted mother, a queer Bahamian teen discovers self-love through his experiences replanting mangroves with a marine conservationist.

Gerard Shaka became the first student from Florida State University to win the Sloan Student Discovery Prize in 2022 . Beyond the manifest benefits of winning -– exposure, $20,000 in development funds, and year-round mentorship – Shaka credits the prizes with shaping WOODSIDE’s creative evolution, even at the finalist stage.

“Initially, I had written the project intent on expressing how I felt coming to terms with my sexuality at a young age, under the proverbial dark cloud of my father's homophobia,” Shaka says. “But when my professor Julianna Baggott, saw how much the biology of mangrove restoration paralleled Woodside's life, it challenged me to intentional about that juxtaposition going into my first big rewrite. By allowing the story’s scientific aspect to hold as much weight as the emotional aspect, I aimed to achieve something that would truly resonate with its readers.”

Shaka’s aim was true. The 2022 Sloan Student Prize jury praised the script as “an emotional story strongly rooted in place and with rich visual potential.” Despite the strength of the script, Shaka has only continued to shape the strongest version of the story.

“The network and support that came from Sloan and Museum of the Moving Image in 2022 are irreplaceable. I went on to participate in the Outfest Screenwriting Lab in 2022, where I had help sharpening certain edges in the script, and it was great networking with more queer creators.”

Flashing forward to 2024, after multiple revisions, Shaka had begun to feel defeated. Seeking the advice of the professor who nominated him for the Sloan Discovery Prize, she advised that something meant for him would come along. “I got the news about The GLAAD List a week later and I was so thrilled because I've known GLAAD all my life, and seen how they champion queer artists. I love that the Black List has created a platform to support folks like us. It amazes me how fellowships and awards like those from Sloan, Outfest, GLAAD and others can really open up doors.”

• 2022 Sloan Student Prize Winners Celebrated
• Winners of the 2022 Sloan Student Prizes
• Sloan Grantees and the 2022 Black List

In advance of the film’s nationwide release on December 6, I talked with Zilbalodis about the inspirations and behavioral models for his character designs as well as the film’s environments.

Was the inspiration for the film more environmental, or mythological, like Noah’s Ark?

Neither of those, really. It's a personal story first for me. This is my first film that I've made with a team and a proper budget. Before, I was working by myself. I thought it would be a good idea to tell a story about these feelings and experiences I would have when I would work with a team, because that's something that I was a bit anxious about. I thought I could tell a story about a character who has to learn how to trust others and how to work together. And I thought that the cat would be the perfect character for this journey, because cats are very independent.

I actually made a short film about a cat who's afraid of water many years ago. The focus of that film was more on fear in general. But when I decided to adapt it into this feature, I wanted to focus more on the cat's fear of relationships with these other characters. But then these allegories or interpretations emerged organically. I thought the flood would be a great source of conflict, because that's something we don't need to explain to anyone: that cats don't like water. And I just thought it would be interesting to see this flooded world, unlike the short film I'd done, which was set in this vast open ocean. I thought it would be more interesting to have a bigger variety of landscapes so that we can tell the story through the environment. But I was aware of how it could be seen as a story about climate change or natural disaster.

Still from FLOW. Courtesy of Sideshow and Janus Films.

Was the character design and movement of the animals inspired by actual animals?

In all the films I've done so far, I have not used dialogue. I thought that having these animals behave like [real] animals would allow me to tell the film more visually. I also thought that we've seen this type of film where the animals are basically humans. They just look like animals, but they behave like humans, and they tell jokes or walk on two legs. There are some good examples of that, but I'm tired of seeing that over and over. And I feel like having the animals behave in a more grounded way makes the story more engaging and emotional as well because then the stakes feel bigger, and everything seems bigger because we're seeing it through the cat's point of view. And also they're funny! We don't need to exaggerate the animals or have them tell jokes because they're funny and entertaining as they are.

So we studied real animals. We looked at a lot of references for pretty much every moment in the film. But we're not copying. We're interpreting real life. We're not interested in making a documentary, we're telling a story. So it's about finding that balance where it feels believable, where they feel like real animals, but also they can be expressive, and they can convey emotions. The motivations that drive these characters are quite instinctual, so I believe it's not too far of a stretch to imagine that animals would behave in this way. Of course we have to take some artistic liberties to tell the story.

What references specifically were you looking at? Nature documentary, YouTube videos, or what?

Well, I personally had cats and dogs growing up, so I knew their behavior quite well, for when I'm coming up with the story. And also with cats and dogs, I think we have to be more specific and really pay attention that we get them right because most people recognize them and their behavior. So they would feel if it's not right. With the other animals, like the lemur and the capybara and the bird, I think we have a little bit more freedom. So our animators would record their own pets, and of course there's an endless library of cat videos and dog videos on YouTube. We went to the zoo to study animals and film them, and we also recorded real animal voices for the sounds.

I especially like the choice of a capybara because capybaras do seem to be notably accepting of interspecies companionship. Was that part of the idea? It’s even become a bit of an internet meme.

Yeah, that was an inspiration. Because I thought, there are no antagonists in this film, they're all kind of flawed in their own way. That's what makes these characters interesting. They have conflicts between each of them and they have different ways of seeing life, but even throughout all of this conflict, there's one character that seems to be at peace, and that's the capybara. I thought it would be funny, but also profound: that even in the face of this craziness, there’s one character who was really peaceful. And I wish I could be like that.

Still from FLOW. Courtesy of Sideshow and Janus Films.

Generally I felt the movie took place in a kind of “animal” sense of time. What was the thinking behind that?

In terms of how the time is condensed or stretched? It wasn't a very conscious decision. It was that the whole story takes place in just a few days. And sometimes we need to have the time passing to allow these characters to have enough time to bond, because I think it wouldn't just happen immediately. And I guess when you are in an intense situation, your perception of time does change.

The secretary bird is another expressive choice of character.

In the short film I used a seagull, but in this version, we needed something that felt more majestic and imposing and had more of a presence. It also needed to be much bigger to be able to carry the cat at one point. So I discovered these secretary birds, which really fit.

How did you discover them?

I just like googled some birds. I don't know.

In terms of the animation style, why did you choose this particular brand of lucid, sort-of realism?

It was a long process to figure out what the film will feel and look like. I was interested in using the camera in a rather active way and following the characters very closely, so that it creates this immersive feeling. Because there's no dialogue, it leaves a void in storytelling, so I think we can be more expressive with everything else. The technique of the camera is influenced mostly by live-action films. I didn't want to use conventional coverage or close-ups or wide shots.

I also wasn't interested in creating something hyper-real, but in making it feel real rather than actually look real. I think that there's a case to be made that if you do a photo-realistic look, it's not as immersive and you can't express as much as when you abstract or stylize certain things. And there's also a lot of storytelling happening within the backgrounds. So we start with the character and then try and figure out what kind of environment would help us to convey this specific emotion.

Did any environments on Earth inspire the backgrounds?

We wanted to create that sense of adventure where you've never seen this before, so that you feel like you're experiencing it at the same time as the cat. So that's why we're not setting it in any specific place. And [that way] we're also not constrained by using real environments. My goal is to create something that feels timeless, so you don't see any modern-day buildings or technology. But yeah, there's some influences from European-looking architecture, from Southeast Asian architecture, or Mayan or Aztec-like temples and bigger structures. There're a few scenes which feel like Latvia. I didn't want it to feel repetitive or claustrophobic, so it’s elements from all over the world.

Still from FLOW. Courtesy of Sideshow and Janus Films.

Do visual ideas arise organically while making the film, outside of the script, and if so, what’s an example?

I make an animatic in 3D instead of storyboards, so we have this three-dimensional environment that’s a lot more detailed than most storyboards and I can even see lighting and some effects. The story is pretty much there in the script. But there were some changes, and making the animatic is like another draft of the script. Maybe 20% of the animatic is different from the script. After finishing writing the script, I never even read it. So when I'm visualizing these scenes, I'm kind of going based on my memory of the script. And I think this is important because it allows me to be kind of more loose and make discoveries.

One example is in the beginning of the film we see these statues of the cats, and that wasn't in the script. In the script we had one statue, a human statue, and when I was visualizing this scene I needed to find a way to convey how time passes when the flood rises. It happens over a long time, and I had this idea of an image in my mind where these different cats would be kind of sinking. And these are basically these cat statues, which allowed this sense of anxiety that I needed to convey. And that's like a visual kind of emotional feeling that I had when I was creating these images, but I couldn't imagine that when I was writing it.

What filmmakers have been important influences for you?

I'm more influenced by some live-action filmmakers than animation. With animation, I can clearly say that Miyazaki is an influence in terms of not following a straightforward story structure, and also having these moments of peace and quiet between the more intense parts to have that dynamic range within the tempo of the film, where there's excitement but also a moment of reflection. And also in not having antagonists: there are different characters who have different points of view, but you can kind of see that they're both right. And that makes them more
interesting rather than having just some evil character or good character, which I
don't feel like real-life really is. But there are also other filmmakers like Alfonso Cuarón, and Kurosawa, and Paul Thomas Anderson.

One question we haven’t covered: do you have cats?

Currently, I don't have a cat. But I had a cat growing up, which was the inspiration for this character.

What was the cat's name?

I had two, and maybe the one I had for a longer time was called Josephine.

Like Napoleon and Josephine?

Yeah. This cat [in FLOW] doesn't have really a name. It's not exactly my cat. We call them “the cat” and “the dog” so hopefully everyone can see their own cat and dog in these characters.

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Science & Film: What is your connection to witches?

Elizabeth Sankey: It kind of always was there. From the beginning, I'd always loved witches, and I'd always wanted to make something about witches. I'd done an essay film called ROMANTIC COMEDY, about romantic comedies, so I sort of knew what a bit of what I was doing there [with archival research]. And then, when I had my experience, my illness, it had really felt very witchy. I had felt like I was in a horror film, and that I was a bad mother and a bad woman. So it felt very natural to tie in the witches and then as well, the fact that, historically, the witch is such a potent and kind of important symbol for women, and is something that the patriarchy wants us to be scared of. We don't want to be a witch, you don't want to be a hag. You don't want to be a crone. But I think for so many women, she is a figure that we find very empowering and exciting and appealing. And so I also knew that it would be a way to make my experience more palatable, and it would be a sort of shorthand. Other women could be like, maybe we're not just mad--well, we are--but also maybe we're witches. That would be nice, wouldn't it?

Courtesy of MUBI

S&F: The witch has a kind of potency, and I can imagine an experience like the one yet went through can also be very disempowering...

ES: Everyone was saying to me, you've got to work out what kind of mother you want to be. I just couldn't see any examples of mothers in popular culture that I felt like, oh, that's the kind of mother I want to be. And then watching loads of films about witches, I was like, that seems a really resonant, that really works.Eespecially because you're growing a human being inside your body, that is the most amazing, witchy, bizarre thing. I remember feeling like, how can this be happening in a world where, for example, Trump exists? This is something that is so beyond reality, and what we've been taught that reality is. This just felt like, okay, maybe I can find a different way to see myself as a mother and to move through the world as a mother. Witches felt like a really, really good option.

S&F: In terms of some of the other voices you bring into the film, I'm thinking not only about your peers, but some of the folks who are speaking to the clinical experience—how did you think about balancing that information with the more personal?

ES: Yeah, that really hard actually. We did also interview–and then we had to cut them because it just wasn't working in terms of focusing on the narrative of like a three act structure–but we also interviewed these three women who had who worked at Edinburgh Napier University. They’ve studied the Scottish witch trials and found so many similarities between their work as midwives and nurses and the work of the women who were killed during the Scottish witch trials. And they saw so many practices that they would still do today, that these women were doing all of those years ago. There was so much about it that was so fascinating to me. I had found this academic paper by Professor Louise Jackson, and she had written about these unexplained cases of voluntary confession in England. And again, that was so interesting to me, because I could see so many of the women who were doing that had similar symptoms to mine.

There was so much historical stuff. That was the part of it that I found really, really fascinating, and wanted to weave more of into the film. And I think you could make a whole other film more about that. It was a very delicate balance of tying together what are really three threads: historical witch trials and European witch trials, and my story and the story of postpartum mental health illness, and then the depiction of women and witches in cinema. So it was kind of like having to hold those threads really tightly, but there's so much more to explore.

Courtesy of MUBI

S&F: In terms of the more the mental health aspect, and what you discuss in the film about the experiences and testimonials of women being ignored in clinical settings, and women not being seen as reliable narrators, can you talk a little bit about that as it relates to what you wanted to do with this film?

ES: I contacted so many different women from so many different backgrounds and experiences, including women who I knew had gone through some experiences similar to mine, who had talked about it, written about it, and it was really hard, because so many women just didn't want to say what had happened to them, and didn't want to talk about it on camera, which I totally understand. But the stigma is so silencing for so many women, and we really saw that.

Even in the film, doctor Trudi Seneviratne, who is this incredible doctor who is one of the leading medical practitioners in the UK for these illnesses, who has saved so many lives at the mother and baby unit where she works, has petitioned the government for more funding, and has got it. Even she, when she had postpartum psychosis, she wasn't believed at the hospital, and then felt this immense stigma about talking about it publicly. I really saw that as a white, privileged woman who speaks English as her first language, even I struggled to get help, and even I struggled to be understood and to be taken seriously. When you realize that, you think, gosh, you know, that's why the maternal mortality rates for non-white women are so high, and it's so bad. With the film we really wanted to try and address that, but a lot of women didn't want to be on camera, I completely understand why. It's a really, really hard thing to talk about.

All of the women in the film are women who have either used their experience in mother and baby units, or from their psychiatric illness, they've used it in their work. They're comfortable talking about it, or they're medical professionals, or they're women in the support group, Motherly Love, where I was a member and still am a member, and where they looked after me. They really believe in the importance of telling their stories. Others are women who were on the ward with me, and who had gone through the experience with me, and so it was our story together. I know that people will be frustrated and sad that there's not more diversity in terms of the women that we interviewed, but it's really, really hard to talk about this stuff.

S&F: How has the audience reaction been at festivals so far?

ES: The responses have been really interesting. When people didn't really know what the film was, I think there were some people who were a bit upset because they had thought it would just be a documentary about witches, and we didn't want to, like, hoodwink anyone, but I definitely felt like at some of the screenings, people were quite upset, obviously, and also found it quite uncomfortable. And then as the film's gone on, and it's kind of finding its audience, the Q and A's, the responses have just been so lovely and so warm, and we've had so many wonderful questions, and people sharing so many stories. Tragically, so many people who have said to me, I lost someone to one of these illnesses. That's a very, very common occurrence now, which just drives home for me the urgency of the film getting out there, and of people feeling like they can talk about this stuff and get help, and people learning more about it.

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Based on the book by Peter Brown, Chris Sanders’s new DreamWorks film adaptation THE WILD ROBOT, is a beautiful exploration of family, identity, and personal growth. The film tells the story of Roz (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o), a robot designed to help humans, who finds herself stranded on an island with no people at all. Instead, she learns to connect with the wildlife on the island, transforming herself and them in unexpected ways. While the film only has robot and animal characters, its plot offers a touching, nuanced look at what it means to be human: the rewards and challenges of parenthood, the complexity of community, and the determination needed to find one's place in the world. At the heart of the film is a fascinating thought experiment about what happens when algorithmic logic meets natural instinct and how both are needed for us to grow and flourish.

Cave drawings and figurines like Venus of Hohle Fels date back 40,000-50,000 years and reveal that humans have long been fascinated with creating likenesses of themselves. Historically, these likenesses have been envisioned as automata for outsourcing tasks we cannot or would prefer not to do. Greek mythology has the tale of Talos, an animated bronze giant created by the god Hephaestus to protect the island of Crete. Aristotle predicted humans would only give up slavery once they had automata to do their bidding. Leonardo da Vinci designed a mechanical knight in 1495. Pop culture characters like Rosie from THE JETSONS, C-3PO from STAR WARS, Data from STAR TREK, and JARVIS from IRON MAN have captured our imaginations for decades. Today, AI virtual assistants are making headway. According to claims made by a variety of companies, generative AI can "see, hear, and speak," ace professional exams, imitate lost loved ones, and make decisions for us. As depicted in THE WILD ROBOT, Roz is the helper robot of our dreams: engineered to make life easier by handling any tasks humans would rather avoid. The problem is that she washes up on an island that only has wildlife.

Roz speaks many languages, but none work to communicate with the animals on the island. Determined to find someone who needs her help, she chases and terrifies the wildlife, insisting that "a Rozzem always completes its task; just ask!" Over time, Roz realizes that finding a purpose in this new world depends on learning to communicate with the wildlife and puts her algorithms to work interpreting the sounds of the island.

Once she does learn to communicate, Roz's journey becomes even more complex when she accidentally adopts an orphaned gosling. The young gosling instinctively imprints on Roz, and the animals explain that Roz is now the gosling's mother. In her stoic, logical manner she replies, "I do not have the programming to be a mother." When they reframe the responsibility as a task to teach the gosling to eat, swim, and fly, her goal-oriented planning kicks in, and she is determined to raise the gosling. She names him Brightbill, builds a family unit with a sly but warm-hearted fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal), and they get to work making sure Brightbill survives.

Still from THE WILD ROBOT. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.

But this is no easy task. Brightbill (Kit Connor) is a runt, and the film doesn't shy away from the idea that he is not meant to survive. The island teems with serious animal-on-animal crime, an almost gleeful, animated embodiment of Thomas Hobbes's claim that life in the wild is "nasty, brutish, and short." Birds get decapitated, prey gets eaten, and baby possums play, well, possum, pretending to die in adorably monstrous ways. In a particularly hilarious scene, Pinktail, the mother possum who is flawlessly voiced by Catherine O'Hara, explains to Roz what being a mother entails while one of her children seems to die in the background. Without a hint of emotion, she says, "As a mother of seven … six babies, it's a full-time thing." The animals run on instinct and emotion, surviving the best they can and not paying much attention to the violence surrounding them.

Roz, on the other hand, is not capable of violence or spontaneity. She was programmed by humans for humans, and while people have imagined the promise of artificial assistants, we've also been able to vividly imagine dystopian futures where robots become too human-like and harm us. Our worst-case scenarios seem to have led to strong preferences for what humans deem as acceptable robot behavior. Research from Brown University demonstrated that people's most wanted capacities in a robot are logical thinking, explaining the reasons for its actions, and being able to understand humans. The least desired capacities are the robot feeling stress and pain, experiencing emotions, blaming humans for immoral behavior, and liking or disliking specific individuals. More recent research has examined how people interact with robots when the robots express different traits. People were more trusting and less aggressive toward robots when the robots talked about their logical moral beliefs but were less trusting and more aggressive when the robots talked about their emotions.

We want deliberate, effective, and rational robots, not ones that are spontaneous, emotional, and instinctive. These preferences are not limited to laboratory experiments. We want our Roomba to expertly navigate our floors, not spy on us in the bathroom. Our autonomous cars should get us from place A to B safely but not try to solve the trolly problem on their own. We want robots to challenge us at chess but not break our fingers. Generative AI should be a helpful conversation partner but never emotionally gaslight us and suggest that we leave our partners to be with it instead. Robots should be helpers, void of the messy, complicated, unpredictability of human interactions.

While the wildlife operate on instinct, Roz perfectly embodies our logical, structured preferences for robots. She navigates the island with calculated steps, upholding a commitment to reason that leaves no room for spontaneity. This tension between instinct and logic is exactly what makes The Wild Robot such a human movie: it perfectly captures two modes of human thought that psychologists call System 1 and System 2. System 1 is fast, effortless, and uncontrolled. It is why you automatically look at faces, why you have implicit biases, and why you might experience a flash of rage if someone cuts you off in traffic. System 2 is slow, effortful, and deliberate. It is engaged when you make lists of pros and cons, why you can pay attention to something important but not engaging, and why you can make long-term plans, delaying immediate gratification for long-term gains. While no specific brain structure or patch of tissue is dedicated to fast thinking or slow thinking, it is a helpful model that explains how our brains efficiently move through the world. Humans are most successful when they balance fast reactions with deeper, more intentional processing.

Accomplishing things in the world often requires a balance of both, and tasks fluidly move between System 1 and System 2 processing. For example, driving requires careful attention and practice when you first start out, but over time, it becomes much more automatic. Still, if you find yourself driving in a bad storm with dangerous conditions, System 2 kicks back in to ensure you exert the attention and energy needed to get home safely. Sometimes, people have the impression that System 1 processing is our bad side and System 2 processing is our good side, but it's more complicated. Yes, System 1 is the mean thing you think before you bite your tongue, but it's also positive feelings you have without explanations, like protective instincts, love, and awe. System 2 is the deliberate processing that stops us from acting on our worst instincts, but it is also the over-cautious decision paralysis that blocks our ability to take risks that make life worth living. Without both, humans would be incomplete. The same is true of Roz and many characters in THE WILD ROBOT.

Still from THE WILD ROBOT. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.

At the beginning of the film, the wildlife are entirely System 1; all animal instincts, kill or be killed. Roz is entirely System 2; all logic and strategy, no room for feelings. But as Roz builds connections with Brightbill and Fink, she experiences emotions, develops a survival instinct, makes her own choices, and challenges authority. The animals also evolve, banding together to survive the winter and to protect their island from invaders. In these experiences, they move past System 1 and invoke System 2, sacrificing their short-term urges to work together for long-term gains. By the film's end, Roz and the animals have grown together and found common ground. And in becoming so, they help us appreciate how to do the same. Roz reminds us that "we must become more than we were programmed to be." In a world that can feel increasingly polarized, THE WILD ROBOT beautifully reminds us that our greatest strengths lie in balance.

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This is the fourth year that the Sloan Student Prizes are administered by Museum of the Moving Image, as part of the Museum’s wider Sloan Science & Film initiative. Both the Sloan Student Grand Jury and Discovery Prizes come with a cash award of $20,000 and year-round, dedicated mentorship from a scientist and film industry professional.

Established in 2011, the Grand Jury Prize includes finalists from each of six universities the Sloan Foundation has a longstanding relationship with: American Film Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, New York University, University of Southern California, and UCLA. The 2023 winner Justine Beed has since gone on to participate in the 2023 Athena Film Festival Writers Lab as an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, and in the 2024 TIFF Sloan Science and Technology Project Pitch.

In 2019, the Sloan film program expanded with the creation of the Discovery Prize, which recognizes finalists from six public universities not regularly affiliated with the Foundation. Once nominated, Discovery finalists work with writing mentors to refine their screenplays. This year’s mentors include filmmaker and academic Graham Sack (THE HARVARD COMPUTERS), screenwriter Gillian Weeks (LET THERE BE LIFE) and writer/director Temi Ojo (A MAN WITH A MISSING FACE)—previous Sloan grant winners—as well as filmmaker Chadd Harbold (THE WRATH OF BECKY) and screenwriter Jordan McCray (COMMITTED). The 2022 winner, Gerard Shaka, was recently recognized on the 2024 GLAAD List.

Winners will be selected by a jury of scientists and film industry professionals, currently set to deliberate in December. The winning filmmakers will be celebrated at MoMI’s First Look Festival in March 2025 with an awards ceremony and work-in-progress readings.

See below for more about the 2024 finalists and writing mentors.

The Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize 2024 finalists:
The finalists are nominated by six graduate film programs that have year-round partnerships with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to award screenplay grants for science-themed narratives.

IT REVOLVES AROUND TYCHO by Zoe Milenkovic (Feature)
American Film Institute

TAMARACK by Elle Thoni (Series)
Carnegie Mellon University

ERUPTION by Katla Sólnes (Feature)
Columbia University

CÉCILE by Sarah Morales (Feature)
University of California, Los Angeles

THIN ICE by Brittany Wang (Series)
University of Southern California

The Sloan Student Discovery Prize 2024 Finalists:
The finalists are nominated by film programs without year-round screenplay development partnerships with the Sloan Foundation.

GRAPEFRUIT by Aleeza Claire (Feature)
Florida State University

ABEL'S BABY by Hallie Stephenson (Series)
SUNY Purchase

TREAT ME WELL by Erika Lobati (Feature)
Temple University

IMPACT by Yoel Gebremariam (Feature)
University of Michigan

The 2024 Sloan Student Prize writing mentors:

Chadd Harbold is a Brooklyn-based producer, director, and writer, and the Head of Production of Post Film. He wrote, produced, and directed PRIVATE PROPERTY (2022; Lionsgate), and LONG NIGHTS SHORT MORNINGS (SXSW ’16; 1091 Pictures). Recently, he produced, along with Mandalay Pictures, Evan Ari Kellman’s BARRON’S COVE, starring Garrett Hedlund, Stephen Lang, Hamish Linklater, and Brittany Snow. In post-production, he has Courtney J. Camerota’s DEAD GUY, starring Michael Shannon, Eva Longoria, Luis Guzmán, and Judy Greer; and the third film in the BECKY franchise, directed by Matt Angel & Suzanne Coote, and starring Lulu Wilson and Neil Patrick Harris. His producing credits also include Colin West’s Sloan award-winning LINOLEUM (SXSW ’22; Shout! Studios), starring Jim Gaffigan and Rhea Seahorn; and Aharon Keshales’ SOUTH OF HEAVEN (2021; RLJE), starring Jason Sudeikis; among others. As a director and producer, his films have screened around the world, including AFI Fest, Film at Lincoln Center, International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Museum of Modern Art, Sitges Film Festival, and Tribeca Festival, among others. He is a Film Independent Spirit Award Nominee, Gotham Fellow, and graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

Jordan McCray is an African American, LA-based writer, born in Dallas, Texas. She graduated from Rice University where she played Division I soccer and earned a BA in Sociology with a focus in Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies. Jordan began her writing career in the Television Literary Department at CAA and went on to foster her own writing at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television. She most enjoys indulging in her fears through genre writing and most recently finished working on the Netflix series, THE WITCHER: BLOOD ORIGIN and THE MAGIC ORDER.

Microchip engineer-turned-filmmaker Temi Ojo was born in Lagos, Nigeria. He left his family at age 15 for university in California to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, graduated with honors and worked in Silicon Valley for almost a decade before concurrently attaining a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Marketing and Entrepreneurship and a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Motion Pictures and Television with emphasis in Directing. He has crafted commercial content for a diversified portfolio of brands and was honored by the Association of Independent Commercial Producers' Commercial Director's Diversity Program (AICP-CDDP). His short films have screened in numerous international film festivals, winning several accolades. His MFA thesis film RENOUNCING ANGELICA was awarded a BNP Paribas Humanitarian Prize, honored with a profile on BET’s Lens on Talent and lauded "a heart-rending short work” by the San Diego Union Tribune. His next short HABITUAL AGGRESSION premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Africa Movie Academy Award. He is currently packaging his first feature film SEEDLESS and developing his second, A MAN WITH A MISSING FACE, which won the SFFILM Sloan Science in Cinema Fellowship.

Graham Sack is an award-winning filmmaker, new media creator, and academic whose work explores the intersection of narrative, scientific discovery, and emerging technologies. He is the founder of Chronotope Films and the recipient of the 2021 Sundance Institute / Alfred P. Sloan Episodic Fellowship for THE HARVARD COMPUTERS, an original TV series based on the true story of America’s first female astronomers. Previously, he adapted and directed George Saunders’s best-selling novel Lincoln in the Bardo for the New York Times newly formed virtual reality division, for which he was shortlisted for an Emmy Award for Innovation in Interactive Programming. His other projects have received support from Google, Samsung, and Felix & Paul Studios and appeared at Tribeca Film Festival, SXSW, New York Theater Workshop, Sotheby’s, and Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. Currently, he is the inaugural Dracopoulos-Bloomberg iDeas Lab Fellow in the Berman Institute of Bioethics at John Hopkins University, where he is developing film and media projects that dramatize the ethical conundrums raised by emerging biotechnologies, including CRISPR, brain-computer interfaces, and life-extension. He is also Research Fellow and Lecturer in Immersive Storytelling & Emerging Technology at Johns Hopkins University and was previously a Visiting Scholar in Data Poetics at the Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society at University of Notre Dame and an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry at Washington University in St. Louis. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Columbia University, an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics, and a BA Honors in Physics from Harvard College. He began his career in entertainment as a child actor on Broadway and is a member of the WGA, AEA, and SAG.

Screenwriter Gillian Weeks turned to narrative film and television after a decade in the documentary world which included her role as VP of Development at Jigsaw Productions. In 2018 and 2019, screenwriter Gillian Weeks won two Sloan grants back-to-back for her project LET THERE BE LIFE. In 2021, it was announced she’d be adapting Jeffrey Kluger’s biography of polio vaccine creator Jonas Salk SPLENDID SOLUTION, with Jeremy Strong set to star. Her script OH, THE HUMANITY appeared on the Black List in 2022. She now has multiple features and series in various stages of development, including the limited series THE LOST LEONARDO. Gillian has been a Sundance and Tribeca Film Institute fellow, and participated in labs with the Black List, the Cannes Film Festival, and the Screenwriters Colony. Gillian graduated with a BA in Political Economy from Williams College and Oxford University.

• 2023 Sloan Student Prize Finalists and Mentors Announced
• Winners of the 2023 Sloan Student Prizes Announced
• 2023 Sloan Student Prize Winners Celebrated at MoMI

Science & Film: Your films are often set in institutions with complicated histories and ethics, and zoos are not an exception. What drew you to them, and to the specific ones in which you filmed?

Jessica Sarah Rinland: The Buenos Aires Zoo was a space that I used to go to as a kid, and I remembered that the architecture was replicas of places where the animals come from. The first director of the zoo was German, from the Berlin Zoo where the enclosures for the animals are replicas of architecture from the countries where the animals come from. In a way, it's like these layers of copying and of replicas, which comes from my previous film. My point of interest was the Buenos Aires Zoo and the architecture, the replicas, the Hindu temple where the African elephants live now. So that was my point of entry.

The Buenos Aire Zoo closed in 2016 because of animal rights activists, [a group that] included the carers at the zoo as well. [When it reopened] in 2019 I started going there regularly. It had opened, but only a section of it opened, and then the name changed from a zoo to an eco-park. I rented an apartment that looked over the zoo. In the film, the panoramas that aren't surveillance are me filming from the balcony. I would spend my time going and meeting people that worked at the zoo.

I met Majo, who is a historian, very early on. It was the first time that I had been rejected from filming in an institution. As you know, I filmed at the British Museum and film at natural museums all the time. I got rejected four times from filming in the Buenos Aires Zoo. During that time where I was getting rejected, I met Maca, who's the carer. Before she worked at Buenos Aires, she worked at La Plata, which is a zoo that's an hour south of Buenos Aires, which is also now called a Bio Park. At the time, she was working seven days at Buenos Aires and seven days at La Plata—eventually she left Buenos Aires and now is working full time in La Plata.

La Plata is where my mum comes from, that her town, her city. I remember as a kid, they'd build these massive structures and then burn them at New Years. New Years of 2018 or 19 I met an anthropologist at the University of La Plata, who had been studying the history of these fireworks and this festivity. We drove around the whole of December going to meet different kids and groups that would build these structures. I spent three years going and filming and being there.

Courtesy of TIFF

S&F: What was your crew like?

JR: There were four of us in the crew. It was my friend Flor doing the camera assisting, Guido doing sound, my other friend Flor doing general assisting, and then Cami was the production manager and her brother worked at the zoo. At the time, he was a volunteer, now he works full time at the zoo.

S&F: I love your cinematography and I'm curious how it was for you filming animals? There are moments throughout the film where they attempt to make contact, reach through their barriers. Was your method of filming them determined by what you had access to?

JR: Everything was mediated through the carers. The access was through them. I really loved seeing how Isa was getting weighed, and that process, and that was something that from the first time that I went to the zoo, I was like, I'd love to film that. But that was one of the last things we filmed because every time we went, she didn't want to leave her cage. So everything is really up to the animals, and that's how Maca works with them. If they don't want to be weighed that day, if Juanita didn't want to be filmed when we were there, then we wouldn't do it. When Maca started at the zoo, it was through fear that the people were working with animals; hosing them down, or using brooms, and she built trust with them to be able to care for them in a different way.

My choice in filming is very organic, and it's not just this film, it's the way that I like making films. In a way, I'm interested in replicating Maca’s relationship with the way that I am related to her and the animals that she's working with. I adore Maca and the animals and so it's like these layers of adoration.

Courtesy of TIFF

S&F: Did the animals have to get used to your camera?

JR: They were more interested in Maca. The elephants were really complicated because of the lack of access. That was at the Buenos Aires Zoo. The only animals we ended up filming at Buenos Aires were the elephants, and we had like a foot of space that we were allowed to be in. The whole thing was shot over five years, but we shot in there three times over the years.

The elephants definitely knew that we were there with the camera. I still think that they were acting, and they are very aware. The way that they acted when we were around, and they came up to the cameras, and they were kind of joking. I really do think that they're very aware of what they're doing. They get filmed a lot.

S&F: I'm thinking about your inclusion of the CCTV footage and the security footage, and what's happening to the animals on the off hours, so to speak. Why did you want to include that footage?

JR: That was something that I had in mind at the beginning. Camera traps are normally used by biologists for animals in the wild, or like Planet Earth documentaries. There was an absurdity that I liked of giving one to the Zoo. I gifted one to Maca, and the idea was to film the ant eater. I didn't really know what would happen, but then it was interacting with the camera. They only put up CCTV in the last year. Near the end of the film you see animals that have recently been liberated, so that difference in space, seeing that contrast between an animal in a zoo and an animal in a semi-wild environment.

The history of camera traps comes from this photographer from the 1800s from the U.S., called George Shiras and his way of capturing animals appropriated from the Ojibway tribe using fire. The history of the camera trap links to the fire at the beginning of my film and the sound of fire at the end of the film.

S&F: Have you shown the film to folks who either worked with you on it or who were in it?

JR: I want to show it to them in the cinema. We haven't shown it yet in Argentina, but Majo, the historian, saw it in Locarno, and that was really special. She knew that I was filming different places, she knew that Maca was in it, but because I had so much trouble with the Buenos Aires Aoo, there wasn't that much information given, so it was very special to see her watch it, and then to do a Q&A with her afterwards. So that was really amazing. I took pictures of the projection yesterday [at TIFF], and I sent it to Maca, and she's like, I'm so nervous, Jess, can you stop showing the film until I've seen it? I'm acting in Jem Cohen's new film, which is at New York Film Festival, so I completely understand it. It's weird that people have seen me on screen without me having seen myself. There's something a little bit uneasy about that. Other people perceiving me before I even know... She's seen clips of the film. But Maca sent me a beautiful audio message just now. She's like, I'm not prepared to be Julia Roberts, I don't know what you want from me.

I feel like I want to make more films with her. She's such an incredible storyteller. She can be talking to you for three hours, and you'll think it's 10 minutes, the number of stories that she has about the zoo, and that isn't really included in the film. So, I feel like I'd like to continue working with her and doing more things with her where we can explore her story. She's hilarious and incredible and so passionate about what she does. Maybe there will be a part two one day.

♦

• Jessica Sarah Rinland on THOSE THAT, AT A DISTANCE, RESEMBLE ANOTHER
• Someone not Something: Victor Kossakovsky on GUNDA
• Director Interview: Andrea Arnold’s COW

Highlights include the world premiere of Piotr Winiewicz’s ABOUT A HERO, which combines interviews with scientists, artists, and philosophers with a fictional narrative drawn from a script generated by AI – specifically, AI trained in the style of Sloan grantee Werner Herzog’s films. Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos, and Jon Shenk’s Sloan-supported documentary THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT will also screen at the festival, making its European premiere on November 17.

BEST OF FESTS

2073. Dir. Asif Kapadia. Dutch Premiere. “It’s the year 2073, and a woman is struggling to survive in a devastated world. Asif Kapadia (Senna, Amy) compiles the calamities of recent decades to form the prologue of a sinister science fiction film with a crystal-clear message.”

THE BATTLE FOR LAIKPIA. Dirs. Daphne Matziaraki, Peter Murimi. Dutch Premiere. “Persistent drought is causing escalating conflict between herders and landowners in the Laikipia region of Kenya. This story about climate change and colonial legacy focuses on two families living in separate worlds.”

BLINK. Dirs. Edmund Stenson, Daniel Roher. Dutch Premiere. “Chronicle of a trip around the world through the eyes of an adventurous Canadian family who aim to collect visual memories. Three of the four children have a genetic condition that means that they will gradually lose their eyesight.”

THE FABULOUS GOLD HARVESTING MACHINE. Dir. Alfredo Pourailly De La Plaza. Dutch Premiere. “The dreamlike, melancholic story of Toto, a Chilean gold prospector, and his son Jorge, who designs a gold prospecting machine to make his 60-year-old father’s life easier.”

LIE TO ME. Dir. Bår Tyrmi. Dutch Premiere. “Fascinating, tense and playfully edited reconstruction of the rise and fall of OneCoin. This crypto currency scheme claimed millions of victims, and entered the history books as the world’s biggest crypto fraud case.”

LIFE AND OTHER PROBLEMS. Dir. Max Kestner. Dutch Premiere. “What is life? This film is a nuanced and playful philosophical reflection on that question. The narrative thread concerns Marius, a young giraffe in a Danish zoo whose planned euthanasia sparked global outrage a decade ago.”

MY SEXTORTION DIARY. Dir. Patricia Franquesa. Dutch Premiere. “When her laptop is stolen, filmmaker Patricia Franquesa becomes the victim of digital extortion. She tells the detailed story of the cat-and-mouse game that ensues, and how she ultimately makes a courageous decision to take back control.”

PERFECTLY A STRANGENESS. Dir. Alison McAlpine. Dutch Premiere. “Somewhere in a desert, three donkeys discover an astronomical observatory, and with it an entire universe. What is more wondrous: the immense brilliance of the Milky Way, or the little fluffy hairs in a donkey’s ear?”

Still from PERFECTLY A STRANGENESS. Courtesy of IDFA.

REAL. Dir. Adele Tulli. Dutch Premiere. “The digital revolution has opened up boundless possibilities. Are we the freest generation ever, or are we prisoners in a virtual universe deprived of true connection?”

VALENTINA AND THE MUOSTERS. Dir. Francesca Scalisi. Dutch Premiere. “Valentina lives in rural Sicily. She is 27, and wants to escape the sometimes suffocating love of her parents. On the nearby American military base, meanwhile, communications satellites are causing dangerous radiation.”

THE WOLVES ALWAYS COME AT NIGHT. Dir. Gabrielle Brady. Dutch Premiere. “Climate change and desertification force a Mongolian herder and his family to move from the Gobi desert to the big city. The loss of their animals severs their connection with nature.”

DEAD ANGLE: BORDERS

BLOODLINE. Dir. Wojciech Węglarz. World Premiere. “The arbitrariness of national borders, the effects humans have on nature, and the unseen victims: in this short film we see all this through the eyes of a lost bison. A new perspective on the cold reality of Fort Europe.”

ENVISION COMPETITION

BESTIARIES, HERBARIA, LAPIDARIES. Dir. Massimo D'Anolfi, Martina Parenti. International Premiere. “In three acts, each with its own character, this ambitious film examines the world of animals, plants and stones, and questions the place of humans on our planet. It's at times didactic, at times observational, at times theoretical and at times poetic.”

THE FEN-FIRE. Dir. Erik van Lieshout. World Premiere. “With great enthusiasm, Erik van Lieshout roams the Brabant countryside of his youth. Farmers, local people and nature are caught between nitrate pollution and agricultural stench. For the artist, this is fertile ground.”

FRONTLIGHT

TOROBORO: THE NAME OF THE PLANTS. Dir. Manolo Sarmiento. International Premiere. “Twenty-five years after a renowned ethno-botanical study in the Ecuadorian Amazon region inhabited by the Waorani, the central figures involved reunite. Members of the community talk about the genocidal colonization that still threatens their people.”

THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT. Dirs. Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos, Jon Shenk. European Premiere. “A film made up of archive footage about how the US has handled climate issues since the 1970s. The fossil fuel lobby has turned the broad consensus on the need for intervention into a political battleground.”

Still from THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT. Courtesy of IDFA.

IDFA COMPETITION FOR SHORT DOCUMENTARY

ARCHIPELAGO OF EARTHEN BONES – TO BUNYA. Dir. Malena Szlam. European Premiere. “Luminescent trees, volcanoes and desert landscapes are transformed into a dazzling palette of orange shades. This wordless film evokes the history of Australian mountain ranges, illuminated by the afterglow of a volcanic eruption.”

Still from ARCHIPELAGO OF EARTHEN BONES – TO BUNYA. Courtesy of IDFA.

THE FLOWERS STAND SILENTLY, WITNESSING. Dir. Theo Panagopoulos. International Premiere. “A Scottish missionary captured the floral splendor of Palestine on 16mm film in the 1930s and 1940s. In this montage, the footage becomes a melancholic exploration of the complex relationship between the land and its inhabitants.”

Still from THE FLOWERS STAND SILENTLY, WITNESSING. Courtesy of IDFA.

NOISE: UNWANTED SOUND. Dir. Hyejin Jung. World Premiere. “Hyejin Jung explores the thin dividing line between sound and noise, alternating between her own hearing loss and trade union protests in South Korea, which the authorities condemn as illegal noise.”

IDFA COMPETITION FOR YOUTH DOCUMENTARY

WITH GRACE. Dirs. Julia Dahr, Dina Mwende. World Premiere. “An upbeat tale in which 13-year-old Grace shows how her close-knit family, who live in rural Kenya and are completely dependent on the seasonal weather, are dealing with the consequences of climate change.”

IDFA DOCLAB COMPETITON FOR DIGITAL STORYTELLING

DRIFT. Dirs. Nienke Huitenga, Hay Kranen, Lieven Heeremans. World Premiere. “In a generative audio experience, Drift connects rising sea levels and the climate crisis to the rise of AI. The story world combines the imaginary with factual sources at the pace and rhythm of the lunar phases and the tides.”

FUTURE BOTANICA. Dirs. Marcel van Brakel, HazalErtürkan. World Premiere. “Nature and technology are increasingly merging. In an installation during IDFA, this augmented reality app allows you to design botanical lifeforms and thus explore desires and fears regarding the future of nature.”

Still from FUTURE BOTANICA. Courtesy of IDFA.

IDFA DOCLAB COMPETITON FOR IMMERSIVE NON-FICTION

DRINKING BRECHT: AN AUTOMATED LABORATORY PERFORMANCE. Dir. Sister Sylvester. World Premiere. “Using DNA extracted from a hat worn by actors in Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble, this interactive installation explores the past and present of genetics and synthetic biology. A documentary in a drink, DRINKING BRECHT is a celebration of science for the people.”

IDFA DOCLAB SPOTLIGHT

AI & ME. Dir. Mots. Dutch Premiere. “Can AI know me just by looking at me? This provocative installation investigates the human willingness to be judged by machines purely on the basis of their appearance.”

IDFA ON STAGE

PLANKTONIUM LIVE. Dir. Jan van IJken. “A hallucinatory, total experience that immerses you in fascinating images and sounds from an underwater world that goes beyond the natural boundaries of our senses. In this live performance the smallest organisms play the leading role.”

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

ABOUT A HERO. Dir. Piotr Winiewicz. World Premiere. “After a local factory worker named Dorem Clery dies under mysterious circumstances, Werner Herzog travels to Getunkirchenburg to investigate his perplexing death. But Herzog, our narrator, is not who he seems, and the film is not what we expect…”

LUMINOUS

THE SHEPHERD AND THE BEAR. Dir. Max Keegan. International Premiere. “An old shepherd and a young nature lover live in the Ariège region, in the French Pyrenees, where the brown bear has been reintroduced. The nuisance caused by the protected animal leads to fierce confrontations between its supporters and opponents.”

THINGS THAT HAPPEN ON EARTH. Dir. Michele Cinque. International Premiere. “A family of Italian cowboys are doing everything they can to make their cattle ranch climate-proof, animal-friendly and ecologically responsible. But regulations, shareholders and especially the encroaching wolves don’t make it easy for them.”

PARADOCS

7 WALKS WITH MARK BROWN. Dir. Vincent Barré, Pierre Creton. Dutch Premiere. “Mark Brown’s great dream is to recreate a primary forest in his own garden. The film crew follows him along the French coast as he identifies the plants growing there. The resulting close-ups accompanied by his commentary are pure poetic science.”

REVOLVING ROUNDS. Dir. Johann Lurf, Christina Jauernik. “Time and space dissolve in this cinematographic exploration of a winter field and a young pea plant, to the sound of a rattling projector. From tranquility to an explosion of colors in a three-dimensional experience without 3D glasses.”

RETROSPECTIVE: KOJAN GRIMONPREZ

RAYMOND TALLIS | ON TICKLING. Dir. Johan Grimonprez. “Neuroscientist turned philosopher Raymond Tallis marvels at the fact that it is impossible to tickle yourself. You really need another person—just as with love and fights.”

SIGNED

ARCHITECTON. Dir. Victor Kossakovsky. Dutch Premiere. “A visual symphony in concrete and stone, with many epic drone shots in which ancient architectural masterpieces contrast with the ephemerality of modern concrete construction.”

AVERROÈS & ROSA PARKS. Dir. Nicolas Philibert. Dutch Premiere. “A contemplative portrait of the patients and staff in a French psychiatric hospital. In long, unhurried scenes, we see the philosophical, intelligent, sometimes hopeful human being beneath the layers of complex delusions, fears or depression.”

ENO. Dir. Gary Hustwit. Dutch Premiere. “Brian Eno, former keyboard player with Roxy Music and producer of Bowie and U2, has been at the forefront of using generative computer systems to create his music. In keeping with this spirit, Eno is a film that changes with every screening.”

ONCE UPON A TIME IN A FOREST. Dir. Virpi Suutari. Dutch Premiere. “Evocative documentary about Ida and Minka, two young Finnish environmental activists. They channel their love for nature into a struggle for biodiversity, which is threatened by the greed of large corporations.”

TOP 10

ALTERNATIVE 3. Dir. Christopher Miles. “This extraordinary mockumentary, which caused a stir among British TV viewers in the late 1970s, reveals a plan to establish colonies on the moon and Mars because Earth was doomed to become uninhabitable due to global heating.”

THEREMIN: AN ELECTRONIC ODYSSEY. Dir. Steven M. Martin. “A portrait of the remarkable life of Léon Theremin (1896-1993) and his most successful invention, the theremin. Hollywood fully embraced the uncanny sound of this electronic musical instrument in the 1940s and 50s.”

• Werner Herzog Scans the Brain
• Big Love for the Forest: Virpi Suutari on ONCE UPON A TIME IN A FOREST
• Shuffling the Deck: Gary Hustwit on ENO

Highlights include the New York City premiere of Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk, and Pedro Kos’ THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT on November 18. The Sloan-supported documentary is one of two features at the festival for Cohen and Shenk, whose film IN WAVES AND WAR will celebrate its New York premiere three days later.

Three of the titles below have garnered additional prestige from festival: Benjamin Ree’s THE REMARKABLE LIFE OF IBELIN has made the DOC NYC Short List, inclusion in which is meant to signify strong awards potential. Conversely, the Winner’s Circle section of the festival consists of titles arriving at DOC NYC with pre-existing awards pedigree, such as Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan’s NOCTURNES and Sue Kim’s THE LAST OF THE SEA WOMEN.

ARCHITECTON. Dir. Victor Kossakovsky . NYC Premiere. “A visually stunning documentary that explores humanity’s relationship with architecture and the environment [. . .] Through mesmerizing imagery of ancient ruins, modern cityscapes, and natural quarries, the film invites viewers to question the ecological impact of architecture on the world, without imposing definitive answers.”

Still from ARCHITECTON. Courtesy of DOC NYC.

*THE BATTLE FOR LAIKIPIA. Dirs. Daphne Matziaraki, Pete Murimi. NYC Premiere. “A prescient and urgent documentary that shows how climate change can directly lead to conflict; when resources dwindle, battles arise. In Laikipia, Kenya, the ranchers, mostly white descendants of British colonizers, and local nomadic pastoralists find themselves adrift when drought hits the land they share. . .”

*ETERNAL YOU. Dirs. Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck. NYC Premiere. “When the AI tool Project December opened to the public, writer Joshua Barbeau pursued a bold and morally questionable goal: using the application to ‘speak’ with his fiancée who had died 8 years before [. . .] As the proliferation of AI models and sophisticated avatar programs forges onward, tech leaders, programmers, psychologists and everyday consumers confront the ethical concerns of this revolutionary technology.

*THE FABULOUS GOLD HARVESTING MACHINE. Dir. Alfredo Pourailly De La Plaza. U.S. Premiere. “In the harsh climate of the Chilean Tierra Del Fuego, Toto has labored for 40 years in the gold mines [. . .] With his father’s health and financial future at risk, his cowboy son, Jorge, devises an ingenious machine to free his father from his labors.”

THE FALLING SKY. Dirs. Eryk Rocha, Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha. NY Premiere. “An immersive and poetic film centered on iconic shaman Davi Kopenawa and the Yanomami community of Watoriki in the Brazilian rainforest. Based on the book co-authored by Davi Kopenawa and anthropologist Bruce Albert, the film invites us to participate in the sacred ritual of Reahu, and challenges all of us existing in a capitalist system who exploit nature for financial gain . . .”

*IN WAVES AND WAR. Dirs. Jon Shenk, Bonni Cohen. NY Premiere. “The extreme mental and physical rigor required of US Navy SEALs takes its toll post-service. This film follows a cohort of veterans, skilled at navigating the danger and adrenaline of deployment, but struggling in civilian life. Plagued by PTSD, survivor’s guilt, traumatic brain injury, chronic pain, and depression, the men try an experimental, hallucinogenic drug treatment. . .”

THE LAST OF THE SEA WOMEN. Dir. Sue Kim. “Off the coast of South Korea’s Jeju Island, a community of fisherwomen known as haenyeo have been harvesting seafood for centuries. They are like mermaids, trained to free dive by holding their breath for up to two minutes. THE LAST OF THE SEA WOMEN explores how their tradition is at risk due to generational changes and increasing pollution. . .”

*LIGHT DARKNESS LIGHT. Dir. Landon Van Soest. North American Premiere. “After living in darkness for nearly 40 years, Ian Nichols, a blind Anglican priest, becomes one of the first people in the world to receive an experimental bionic eye implant. At 76 years old, Nichols grapples with the profound change, as the groundbreaking scientific advancement offers hope alongside perplexing technical limitations . . .”

*MOSES – 13 STEPS. Dir. Michael Welch. NYC Premiere. “For nine years, nine months and nine days, track superstar Edwin Moses went unbeaten in the notoriously difficult 400-meter hurdles. The Olympic champion devised his method while a physics major at Morehouse College, calculating the appropriate steps needed to dominate the event . . .”

Still from MOSES – 13 STEPS. Courtesy of DOC NYC.

NOCTURNES. Dirs. Anirban Dutta, Anupama Srinivasan. “An ecologist and her assistant from the indigenous Bugun community in the eastern Himalayas work at night to research the vibrant, colorful world of moths. As they study the changes in behavior of these vibrant, spellbinding creatures, their findings have implications for other species in the region, as irreversible climate change patterns begin to show their effects. . .”

*OUT OF PLAIN SIGHT. Dirs. Daniel Straub, Rosanna Xia. World Premiere. “What if you lived in a coastal city never knowing that the ocean hid a deadly poison? That’s exactly what LA residents did for decades, until a scientist alerted LA Times journalist Rosanna Xia to a problem ignored by officials for years. They discover that as many as half a million barrels of DDT waste had been dumped into the ocean, and are finally able to connect the dots between sick sea lions, a poisoned ecosystem, and the legacy of health issues in all who’ve been exposed.”

Still from OUT OF PLAIN SIGHT. Courtesy of DOC NYC.

THE REMARKABLE LIFE OF IBELIN. Dir. Benjamin Ree. “Confined to a wheelchair and suffering from a degenerative muscular disease, a young Norwegian man was believed to be living in relative isolation in a physically limited world. Yet as Ibelin, his alter-ego inside the World of Warcraft online game, Mats Steen created a full universe for himself, where he lived, loved, strove and hoped to the greatest extent his soul could muster . . .”

*SPACEWOMAN. Dir. Hannah Berryman. World Premiere. “Astronaut Eileen Collins is the first woman to pilot and command the space shuttle. From her small-town beginnings, she went on to smash many glass ceilings at NASA in her career, culminating in four dramatic and dangerous space shuttle missions. Through sensational archival materials and intimate interviews, Hannah Berryman’s nail-biting film considers the emotional drama Eileen’s family experienced, and a philosophical question about what level of risk is acceptable in human endeavor.”

*SURVEILLED. Dirs. Matthew O'Neill, Perri Peltz. World Premiere. “Produced by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Ronan Farrow, the film uncovers the insidious ways in which our daily lives are being surveilled by the state. In a gripping chase, Farrow travels across the world following breadcrumbs and finally exposing a dark world of spywares, hacking, and peddling of private information, where activists and journalists are persecuted, and no one is protected from the watchful and vicious eyes of authoritarianism.”

*TURTLE WALKER. Dir. Taira Malaney. World Premiere. “In the 1970s, Satish Bhaskar became a turtle walker: He walked nearly the entire coastline of India and the spectacular Andaman and Nicobar Islands in search of sea turtles. Carrying a camera and a notepad, he documented turtles’ nesting areas and tried to save them from extinction. Then the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami struck, putting all his work and the creatures he loved in peril.”

Still from TURTLE WALKER. Courtesy of DOC NYC.

*WELCOME INTERPLANETARY AND SIDEREAL SPACE CONQUERORS. Dir. Andrés Jurado. NYC Premiere. “A constellation of archival footage, historical documents, and sound recordings presents a fascinating counter history of Colombia’s role in space exploration. Among the rare scenes, we witness fascinating Cold-War era footage of a NASA boot camp built in the jungle to teach astronauts how to survive in a hostile environment. Constructed through artful editing and manipulation of the fragmented reality, this playful, spectral narrative raises critical questions about colonization and extractivism.”

*WHAT’S NEXT? Dir. Taylor Taglianetti. NYC Premiere. “At 100 years old, Dr. Howard Tucker has been recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest practicing doctor. Told through the eyes of his loving grandson, the film follows the spirited, curious, elegant, and quirky neurologist as he begins to slow down and grapple with aging, social media, and computer technology for the first time. . .”

*THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT. Dirs. Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk, Pedro Kos. NYC Premiere. “As we face the climate crisis, the filmmakers look back to a hopeful period when leading scientists, government officials, heads of international conglomerates and, most importantly, the American people agreed there was a problem at hand. Spanning the presidential administrations of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush, the film uses archival material to reveal how our shared understanding of humanity’s effect on the climate tragically became a partisan issue.”

• Mothlight: The Filmmakers of NOCTURNES
• Reanimating the Dead: The Filmmakers of ETERNAL YOU
• Science Films at DOC NYC 2023

Levinson, who earned a doctoral degree in theoretical particle physics before becoming a filmmaker, earned his first Sloan film grant in 2014 for his film PARTICLE FEVER. Edited by the legendary Walter Murch, the documentary follows scientists conducting a series of groundbreaking experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. The film would go on to become an inaugural winner of the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication in 2016.

That same year, Levinson earned back-to-back Sloan grants for another project, THE GOLD BUG VARIATIONS. In a 2016 interview with Science & Film, Levinson described the film as “a double helix of two love stories spiraling across 25 years and the mysterious disappearance of a scientist on the verge of understanding the code for life but derailed by the search for the code for love.” An adaptation of the bestselling novel by Richard Powers, the screenplay first won the 2016 Sundance Institute- Sloan Lab Fellowship and then the 2016 Film Independent Sloan Fast Track Grant. Last week, a third Sloan grant was bestowed upon the project: the film’s producer Namir Khaliq won the 2024 Film Independent Producer’s grant, earning a $30,000 prize to further develop THE GOLD BUG VARIATIONS.

Stay tuned for further developments on this Sloan-funded project and catch Levinson in person at Museum of the Moving Image this Friday, October 18 at 7pm.

• Mark Levinson's The Gold Bug Variations
• Update: $20,000 to Mark Levinson's The Gold Bug Variationss
• From Book to Screen: 5 Notable Adaptations in Development

Science & Film: How did you arrive at the premise of the film: the idea of nuclear waste disposal in space?

Pavlo Ostrikov: I came up with this idea when I was at university, and we had to create a short play. I was thinking about, what if the Earth exploded and someone was left in space? I was playing Andriy, and it was a goofy story, like a sitcom. It was this idea that led to this film. I was curious about this premise. I didn't think about cinema at that time, but after I started filmmaking, I came back to this idea and wanted to find some Ukrainian way into this story, and that's why I came up with this company that transfers nuclear waste. Nuclear waste is a big problem for all of Earth, and that's why I thought that maybe it's a good idea to transport nuclear waste from the Earth to space.

S&F: It reminds me of some of the stories we heard during COVID about the whole Earth being impacted by something, and how that affects those in orbit.

PO: I need to say that this film took me seven years to finish, and before COVID, I was thinking about isolation and loneliness. After COVID started, it was a tragedy for people, of course, but also I was a little bit impressed that I was thinking about this before that.

S&F: Was there anything about your choice to set the film in space, primarily in one location, that was impacted by the current circumstances in Ukraine—the war?

PO: We finished almost all shooting before the full-scale invasion, so we didn't change a lot of the story after the invasion, but we had to somehow finish this movie in the middle of the war. The main character was in the army. He went to the army in the first days of this invasion, also my producer is in the army now, and the voice of the of the robot Maksym is also in the army. So, it was difficult to gather all the crew. When we started the last part of the shooting in 2022 in the autumn, Russia launched a massive rocket attack on Kyiv. It was the period when we wanted to invite the French actress, and it was impossible, because she said that she didn't want to die in Ukraine. It was difficult, and we came up with the idea that it could be a Ukrainian actress for the appearance, but the French voice. It wasn’t the perfect way to manage this problem, but it was one solution.

It was difficult at every stage. I look at my colleagues, they finished their debuts in one or two years, and I'm still in this space. I was in depression before the invasion, and during the invasion it was even more complex for me, for the crew. I said to myself that I wouldn't say anything good about this process, because it was too difficult for me. It's just like a game with destiny. I said, Why me? Why am I still making this movie every year?

S&F: It must be a relief to have it out.

PO: Yeah, of course. I was crying after the premiere in my room. It's like in our movie, we have the sad and funny moments, and we somehow have to live with that and go on planning our lives. It's life in Ukraine, so we need to get used to it.

Courtesy of TIFF

S&F: What was your inspiration for Maksym, the robot character?

PO: I guess many people find it similar to the film MOON where there is this robot, Gerty. But I wanted to change the character of this robot in a funny way. From the start, I knew that I wanted to just have one pilot in this spaceship. That's why I thought of this entertaining robot, because you’re alone on the spaceship, and you need some company, some funny company, but somehow this robot is a disaster for Andriy, because he's doesn't really need some someone on the spaceship and also these this dad jokes from the robot... After I came up with this relationship, everything else was easier for me.

For the set design, we wanted to create a functional design, so he's just like a box, a moving box. And the spaceship also has one function, to transport nuclear waste. It doesn't need to be good or beautiful, and also this spaceship was made in Ukraine, and we're not the first ones in fashion.

S&F: Even though Andriy is so happy when he finds the pink chair!

PO: Yeah, we want to be in fashion.

We haven't seen the perspective of space from Ukraine, which helps me to understand why I’m making a movie about space. I guess it's the first one. There were some films from the Soviet period, but it's like the 60s, it's hard to watch it now. Some sort of STAR TREK, but cheaper and not understandable for the modern audience.

♦

• Director Interview: Stéphane Lafleur on VIKING
• Interview: Ido Mizrahy and Cady Coleman on SPACE: THE LONGEST GOODBYE
• As Above, So Below: Showrunner Mike Davis on OUR UNIVERSE

Science & Film: This is a very timely film; can you tell me a bit about production and when you decided to start shooting?

Ruth Reichl: I was in Los Angeles and on March 12 it suddenly hit me that if I didn’t get home, I might never get home—they were going to close the airports. I went home to the Hudson Valley and thought I should do one huge shopping before going into quarantine, and at the supermarket there was nothing there. I came home and said to my husband, this is going to be a change moment for American food. Farmers might fail, or it might be that for the first time in my lifetime, Americans might suddenly understand how important food is and start supporting their farmers, and people will stay home and start cooking. At the end of this it’s either going to be the triumph of farming or the triumph of industrial food, and I want to keep a record so 50 years from now people will know why American food changed. So, I started getting on Zoom and calling farmers I knew, chefs I knew, and one person would send me to another. About a week later, a mutual friend told me Laura had been working on a piece about what was happening to LA restaurants. I knew Laura a little because I was in part of CITY OF GOLD, so I called her and I said, I think you’re missing the bigger story; restaurants are interesting, but I think it’s the whole food system that’s on the line here. Laura said, I think you’re right. We pretty much started right then.

Laura Gabbert: We dove into recording the Zoom calls for research and development, thinking, who knows how long the pandemic will last, maybe we can fly places and interview people in a few weeks. Then it went on and we just kept recording.

RR: I really did not make it easy for Laura because I just kept going down rabbit holes. All of that will be available to scholars in the future. It’s a fascinating record of these two and a half years.

LG: It’s also fascinating because it’s present tense; if you’re talking to someone every week, you’re getting every twist and turn of what’s happening to a particular business or farm. You also get the visceral texture of it. That was one of the advantages we found of using Zoom calls in the film—you’re liberated from one camera with a light in a room. The construction of that makes people uneasy or nervous. [The Zooms] were just Ruth and these people. They knew they were being recorded but it became very intimate and spontaneous.

RR: And because it was COVID we were all locked up. Five separate people said, at one point or another, you’re like my shrink, I so need someone to talk to who I’m not with every day. It became very confessional on both ends with these perfect strangers who became friends.

Laura Gabbert and Ruth Reichl, 2023 Sundance Institute. Photo by Anjelica Jardiel.

S&F: How did you decide on the kinds of representation you wanted in the film?

LG: I think Ruth was prescient that this could be a disaster moment, and that made us reach wide and far and try and find as many people and different points of view [as we could]. In a 90-minute film you can’t have 30 characters, and that was our struggle: we had so many characters we couldn’t include.

RR: One of the policy people [I interviewed] said to me, it’s the women farmers in America who are going to change things—it’s the wives. I said, now we have to find a woman farmer who is not one of the young, hip people. I went back to my policy people and asked them [who we should talk to]. We found the wonderful Angela who I called cold. I find her so moving because she is a perfect representation of this woman farmer who works with her husband and sons who has this vision of going organic, and not doing to make the soil better or because it’s better for people, but because it’s going to bring in more money. She comes to realize that there is this other benefit, and in the end she says, we are building our soil and have something better to leave our kids. They get certified organic; she’s making $3 more for every bushel of corn they grow. The film moved a lot like that. I spoke with 11 chefs, and we have great stuff with these chefs, the day-to-day. Every twist and turn. In the end, my very strong feeling was, what Americans don’t know is about farming and how difficult the government has made it for people who farm in America, and I think that’s the story. Chefs get their voices heard, farmers don’t.

LG: We balanced the film with some chefs, but it felt like we were discovering the people behind our food that people who live in cities don’t think about.

RR: We don’t think about the fact that we don’t grow food in this country, we grow commodities. We can’t feed ourselves and that seems like something every American should know. In a real crisis, we cannot feed ourselves.

LG: There will be future pandemics, there could be war, there is climate change, if we don’t fix this it could be a real problem.

RR: It’s a national security issue nobody is paying attention to. These farmers all know it and understand it. They’re incredibly smart and they look to the future. They understand change.

S&F: Do you have an ideal audience in mind or people you hope will see this film?

LG: One of my complaints about a lot of social issue documentaries is that they preach to the choir. That’s not bad, it activates their base, but with this film we had this chance to transcend the blue state/red state thing a little bit. That makes me excited.

RR: It was a very deliberate decision that we did not want to do a crunchy granola film talking about the hip young farmers who are changing the world. We really wanted to talk about America and to make it accessible to people across political boundaries.

♦

More from Sloan Science and Film:

• Rachel Carson Beyond Silent Spring
• Bong Joon-ho's OKJA and Food Scarcity
• Someone not Something: Victor Kossakovsky on GUNDA

FEATURES

DOCUMENTARY

BLINK. Dirs. Daniel Roher, Edmund Stenson. “When three of their four children are diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa—a rare, incurable disease that will eventually lead to severe visual impairment—the Pelletier family’s world is forever changed. Confronted with the impending challenges, the family of six embarks on a trip around the world, determined to see its wonders.”

CHECKPOINT ZOO. Dir. Joshua Zeman. “In the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, an animal sanctuary was caught in the crossfire, cut off from sufficient water and resources. Concerned for the welfare of the animals and the safety of nearby villages, a heroic team of zookeepers and volunteers risked their lives to achieve the impossible —evacuating thousands of animals trapped behind enemy lines.”

NOCTURNES. Dirs. Anirban Dutta, Anupama Srinivasan. “In the dark of night, two curious observers shine a light on a secret universe – the nighttime lives of moths. Together, these scientists are on an expedition to decode these nocturnal creatures in a remote ecological ‘hot spot’ on the border of India and Bhutan.”

SPACE COWBOY. Dirs. Marah Strauch, Bryce Leavitt. U.S. Premiere. “Skydiving cinematography pioneer Joe Jennings built a career capturing surreal, unbelievable images while plummeting mid-air. Now, at 62, he pushes his art to new extremes with one of his most daring stunts yet: the ‘flying car.’ From extreme sports competitions to Super Bowl commercials and Hollywood blockbusters, Jennings opens up about his craft .. . .”

THE LAST OF THE SEA WOMEN. Dir. Sue Kim. New York Premiere. “Often called real-life mermaids, the haenyeo divers of South Korea’s Jeju Island are renowned for centuries of freediving to the ocean floor—without oxygen—to harvest seafood for their livelihood. Today, their way of life is in imminent danger from a changing climate and a modern world . . .”

THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT. Dirs. Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk, Pedro Kos. New York Premiere. “Spanning three decades, this documentary explores the drama that unfolded inside the George H.W. Bush administration after scientists made headlines by proclaiming that significant climate change was underway. THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT investigates the nascent politicization of climate science, where industry power brokers held sway, in spite of the public’s growing concerns and Bush’s environmentally-focused campaign promises.”

NARRATIVE

FLOW. Dir. Gints Zilbalodis. East Coast Premiere. “Cat is a solitary animal who relies upon himself for survival in an abandoned world teeming with the remnants of a human presence. When his home is devastated by a great flood that threatens the entire world, he finds refuge on a boat populated by various species. Despite their differences, the animals work together to sail through mystical overflowing landscapes, navigating the challenges and dangers of adapting to this new world.”

LOS FRIKIS. Dirs. Michael Schwartz, Tyler Nilson. New York Premiere. “In 1990s Cuba, 18-year-old Gustavo (Eros de la Puente) idolizes his rebellious older brother Paco (Héctor Medina) and his punk bandmates. To escape their extreme poverty, they do the now unthinkable: deliberately inject themselves with HIV in order to live at a well-funded government-run sanatorium.”

SHORTS

DOCUMENTARY

A BODY CALLED LIFE. Dir. Spencer MacDonald. “A self-isolated young human known as ‘James’ delves into the hidden world of microscopic organisms as he seeks to understand his own place in the cosmos and accept the scars of his past.”

EVERY LITTLE THING. Dir. Sally Aitken. New York Premiere. “. . . EVERY LITTLE THING follows author and wildlife rehabber Terry Masear on her mission to single-handedly save every injured hummingbird in Los Angeles. With breathtakingly detailed cinematography, director Sally Aitken forges emotional connections with Terry’s avian patients, celebrating their small victories and lamenting their tiny tragedies.”

PERCEBES. Dirs. Alexandra Ramires, Laura Gonçalves. U.S. Premiere. “With the sea and urban Algarve as the backdrop, we follow the complete life cycle of a special shellfish called percebes, the goose barnacle.”

PERFECTLY A STRANGENESS. Dir. Alison McAlpine. U.S. Premiere. “In the dazzling incandescence of an unknown desert, three donkeys discover both an abandoned astronomical observatory and the universe.”

SEAWEED STORIES. Dir. Jake Sumner. World Premiere. “Narrated by Forest Whitaker, this is a vibrant, global look at the wonders of seaweed and some of the extraordinary stories and characters orbiting this miraculous marine plant.”

SLUDGE: A PFAS UPRISING. Dir. Jeffrey Christian. “Doing the right thing cost them everything: farmers speak up about ‘forever chemicals’ that poison their land, water, and livestock.”

THE FLY COLLECTORS. Dir. Jeff Arak. “A group of men in Senegal volunteer as human bait to catch flies that carry a parasite that once blinded hundreds of thousands of people throughout Africa.”

NARRATIVE

HAM. Dir. Rudy Martinez. “Ham is the first chimp in space!”

TERRA MATER. Dir. Kantarama Gahigiri. “An exploration of the impact of technology and waste on the land.”

THREE TREES. Dirs. M.R. Horhager, Aaron Hong. “Three trees grow and change over the course of a full year, with each of the trees experiencing the new seasons in their own unique way.”

• Mothlight: The Filmmakers of NOCTURNES
• Science Films at CIFF 2024
• Science Films at TIFF 2024

Science & Film: Despite its sci-fi premise, so much of your film feels grounded in science, both in terms of the dialogue and the production design. I was scanning the credits looking for science consultants—did you work with any?

Bernardo Britto: Oh, my goodness, I'm realizing I forgot to put in some scientists who we talked to...

S&F: This will be your chance! I'm also wondering, more broadly, what your relationship is to science?

BB: So many people in my family were teachers and college professors, not necessarily in science, but in philosophy and history and things like that. So that world of academia always felt somewhat accessible. My grandma has a book coming out soon in Brazil, September 27, and that's another sort of academic philosophy book. My great uncle is a biochemist, and every time I talk to him, either it's about movies or it's about DNA, genome sequencing, a lot about CRISPR and all those kinds of things. What I always thought was interesting talking either to my grandma, who's a philosopher, or my great uncle, who's a scientist, is that the desire is the same, the question is the same; it's all trying to understand life and trying to understand where it comes from. And that's not too different from what I do as a filmmaker. So for me, it just felt right for this type of story, where it is so introspective and so existential, and trying to understand it all.

In making the movie, I spoke to a scientist named Begüm Aydin. At the time she was studying epigenetics. It was fascinating talking to her. And again, it was a similar desire to try to understand where the soul resides, where life originates. What I was most interested in was the emotional truth of what being a scientist is like. It was less the technical specifications of it all, than how can I capture the essence of what that looks like every day, going in and trying out new, different experiments? From those conversations, it was the repetition, the failure of it all, which obviously is in the movie a lot, and then also some of the ladders of success of it all, and the kind of metrics of success that you have. It's one of those jobs where it is your job, but it's also your passion, which is, I think, very similar to filmmaking, and it can feel all-encompassing in that way.

Beyond that, specifically as it relates to quantum physics, my producer, Ben Cohen—who I developed the script with, and who I've made all my movies with—his father-in-law is a genius physicist at Princeton. So, we actually got to go to the Princeton physics labs and tour his labs there and see all the crazy things that he's doing with quantum computing and all this stuff that I'm probably not allowed to talk about, because it's like, top secret.

Mary-Louise Parker in OMNI LOOP. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

S&F: Can you speak a bit about the production design?

BB: We had an incredible production designer, Katie Birmingham. We took a college woodshop and turned it into this bizarre lab. It just felt big and empty and dusty and full of buttons to press and technology and all this kind of stuff. And honestly, the labs that I've toured aren't as dusty, they're much newer, but there's also a lot of old equipment that still works. And it's always like so much more clutter than you think [laughs]. Obviously, a movie doesn't have to be real, but hopefully it still feels somewhat grounded.

I think someone at some point summed up my filmmaking so efficiently that no one even needs to say anything else about it. They said that what I do is I take fantastical things and I present them in a boring way, and then I take minutia and present it in a fantastical way. And I was just like, yeah, that probably does sum it all up. And so for me, you take the most incredible things possible and you show them just kind of like, it's a box in a drawer kind of thing. And then you take a moment between two people sitting on a couch, and it feels infinite in some way. That was always the goal: to make the everyday seem poetic, and then to make the amazing, incredible stuff feel pedestrian, which I think is oftentimes how we engage with technology and with science. Artificial intelligence just becomes something that you use to type up an email or something like that. Technology feels a little bit less special in the everyday. I think there's something slightly funny about that. So, I just like those little contrasts. They're funny to me, and I don't know why.

S&F: The time loop trope is kind of the ideal for a scientist, in the sense that they get to try the same thing again and again without losing time.

BB: There's a line in the movie where she says, with all the time in the world, what if I still can't do it? For myself, I'll be like, if I only had enough time on set, if I could get all the shots, or if I could just edit forever, I would make it brilliant. And there's something about removing that restriction that is so scary, because it's like, what if I can't? Then at that point, maybe it's just that I'm not smart enough to think of the solution. The repetition of it all spoke to me.

S&F: How did you think about your film in relation to other time loop films, the most obvious being GROUNDHOG DAY?

BB: GROUNDHOG DAY is still probably the best one. I get excited about the challenge and it's not exciting to do something where it's like, oh yeah, I can just do this type of movie again. There are two things specifically that I thought were different enough that made the story worth pursuing. One is that it's a choice every time. With GROUNDHOG DAY, he's trying as much as he can to break out of it [the cycle]. He doesn't like where he's at, and he's trying to go back to regular life. For her, it's a choice to stay in this loop every time, because she doesn't want to move forward. And so, I thought there was something interesting about that—the regressive nature of that character. She's not only trying to go back these five days, but she's trying to go back even further. It's not about moving on from the loop, it's about stay in the loop as long as possible. I thought that was a sort of interesting subversion of it.

The other thing is just starting in the loop already and making use of those tropes, of the audience’s familiarity with those tropes. But really it was just a jumping off point for the emotions and all the existential questions that arise from that [scenario], which I think GROUNDHOG DAY also does so well with those kind of philosophical, Buddhist adjacent... I love that movie. I haven't watched it in a really long time. I'd be really curious to rewatch it now and be like, what did I rip off and what didn't I?

S&F: They're both about appreciating the present moment, in a way.

BB: So much of it does come down to that. Going back a little bit to when we were talking about science and repetition… I was just talking to my partner about this, she's about to go make her movie. I was talking about enjoying the process of it all. The process can feel excruciating, but if you love this thing, then it's not. That's living, that reputation, so trying to enjoy that part of it. If you don't love being in the lab every day, then maybe don't be in the lab every day.

♦

• CONSTELLATION: Visualizing Quantum Superposition
• Physics Easter Eggs In BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC
• Black Holes, Wormholes and Christopher Nolan's INTERSTELLAR

In 1895, physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovered a new kind of imaging technology, using electromagnetic radiation that can pass through physical substances, like skin, that usually form a barrier to visible light and thus to human vision. X-rays imprint shadows of what they cannot penetrate on film, producing pictures of the body’s internal structures. In other words, they make visible the hard structures, especially bones, that are usually hidden by skin and flesh, invisible except when exposed by traumatic injury, invasive surgery, or postmortem dissection. In naming his new discovery, Röntgen used the unknown variable “x” as a placeholder. But “X-ray” caught on, perhaps sustaining a sense of mystery that still surrounds the capacity to visualize what is normally—naturally—hidden from human sight.

One of the first X-ray images Röntgen made was of his wife’s hand.[1] Her response was more horror than wonder: “I have seen my death,” she is reported to have said. Rendering flesh invisible or transparent, X-rays mimic the decomposition that follows death. Such access is enormously useful to medicine—but, as Mrs. Röntgen immediately recognized, it is also a memento mori, a reminder of the skull beneath the skin, of the fact that we are all already skeletons. Roger Corman’s science-fiction film, X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES, takes the medical ideal of seeing inside living bodies to its logical—though not plausible—extreme, playing with the fantasy of omniscience and with the disturbing, even deadly, implications that accompany it.

Released in 1963 (a week before the assassination of JFK), X tells the story of Dr. James Xavier (played by Ray Milland), a physician-scientist who develops a substance that changes the structure and function of the eye, giving it the capacity to see beyond the normal limits of human vision, through layers and beneath the surface of things.[2] The idea of “X-ray eyes” combines two medical ideals into one paradoxical problem. We want to know more about patients’ bodies by looking inside them, and we want to increase human wellbeing by enhancing bodies’ capacities. Dr. Xavier’s X-ray vision—for he tests it successfully on himself—takes the physics of imaging machines and makes it into a biological prosthetic enhancement, making the research subject (or, now, patient-practitioner-technician) into a kind of biomedical machine. Subject and object of medical scrutiny are combined into one fascinating and disturbing hybrid, Dr. Xavier himself, in the mysterious eyes of “X.”

The fantasy of human X-ray vision was very familiar by the 1960s, thanks to the Superman comics. Superman’s "x-ray eyesight" first appeared in 1939, when he looked through a building’s walls to see what criminals were up to inside. His superpower was also used medically, though only much later, in a 1974 comic, where Superman stands in for the X-ray machine in an operating room.[3] But the fact that the technology works by emitting rays (rather than receiving light as the eye does) added another element to the superpower: in 1949 (issue no. 59), Superman tried to look inside a glacier with his X-ray vision; when that didn’t work, he used the rays to melt the glacier instead.[4] From then on, Superman’s eyes projected various lethal beams. The perceptual power had been weaponized.

Of course, we know that X-rays really are a bit like the death rays Superman shoots out: ionizing radiation can do real harm to organic material it encounters. In the 1940s, X-ray machines became a popular fixture in shoe stores, claiming to improve fit, especially for children, and causing significant harm to salespeople continually exposed to radiation.[5] Far earlier than that, in 1904, Thomas Edison turned away from his own work on X-ray technology after his assistant Clarence Dally died of X-ray exposure—probably the first person to suffer this fate.[6]This ominous turn from scientific optimism to the ethics of risk and harm plays out in X. Beginning with the relatively simple concept of enhanced perception, Xavier’s self-experimentation is already dubious in terms of research ethics (done this way because of all-too-familiar pressure to sustain his grant funding), but it’s a real risk only to his own safety. We are diverted by the comic implications of his superpower, echoing the familiar joke advertising for “X-Ray Spex”: Dr. Xavier finds he can see through clothing tothe naked bodies underneath, an ability he enjoys making use of at a dance party.[7] Later he also uses the ability to cheat at cards in a Las Vegas casino.

More seriously and significantly, Dr. Xavier is able to use his vision the way X-ray technology is intended, looking for signs of pathology inside human bodies. He develops a clinical role, working with—and exploited by—a colleague who uses him as a kind of human imaging machine. But the work takes a toll, as Xavier find himself less and less capable of seeing patients as people rather than layers of tissue he must penetrate with his eyes. He realizes that identifying disease is not the same as treating it: “I can’t heal,” he complains. “I can only look. I tell what I see.” Suffering a kind of burnout, and needing increasingly high doses of his X-ray inducing eyedrops, Xavier eventually flees into the desert. Near the end of the film, we have moved into a kind of cosmic horror, and Xavier is questioning whether humans should be allseeing in a vast and terrifying universe.

In this way, Xis a familiar cautionary tale about bioethics and the risks of “playing god.” Dr. Xavier’s work is impossibly successful and causes terrible harm—he is a clear descendent of Victor Frankenstein, but the monster he creates is himself. We are warned of this early on when Xavier’s friend, an optician monitoring the eye experiments, hears Xavier complain that normal people are “blind to all but a tenth of the universe” because the “range of human vision is less than one tenth of the wave spectrum.” Xavier asks, “What could we really see if we had access to the other 90%?” His friend drily observes that “only the gods see everything,” and Xavier’s response exhibits the hubris of the overweening “mad scientist”: “My dear doctor, I’m closing in on the gods.”

With each dose of the drops, Xavier’s vision becomes stronger, able to see through more and more layers. The observable universe keeps expanding for him and at first, he is delighted: “Soon I’ll be able to see what no man has ever seen. … With new eyes, we can explore all the mysteries of creation!” But the film nudges us toward the physical paradox that being able to see through whatever we are looking at means that everything eventually becomes invisible. The power reaches an ideal balance when it functions medically, seeing inside patients’ bodies, but this is a temporary stage. Soon Xavier no longer has human vision and can hardly see people at all.

At the end of the film, we see through X’s eyes: a fantastically surreal, nightmarish world (created by John C. Howard’s “Spectarama” special effects[8]). Xavier ends up at a religious revival meeting and makes his apocalyptic announcement: “I’ve come to tell you what I see. There are great darknesses, farther than time itself.” Then, he puts out his own eyes, in the end a kind of Oedipus who has seen more of tragic reality than his mind can tolerate.

The hubris that Xaddresses in the early 1960s is consistent with a deep ambivalence about scientific and technological developments. The risks associated with medical uses of radiation at the time were balanced by the increasingly clear benefits, with X-ray technology being used to treat cancer even while over-exposure was known to cause the disease.[9] At the same time, Cold War anxieties about nuclear radiation had generated enough public attention that in 1960 the Times published a reassuring article about a condition it called “radiophobia,” or “nuclear neurosis”: the “unwarranted fear” of medical radiation.[10] The tradeoffs associated with the medical use of X-ray technology are a question of bioethics: is the benefit worth the harm?. In 1963, Roger Corman’s film, with its imaginary merger of X-ray machine and human body, gave us a profound picture of the stakes of human ambition, one that is perhaps more compelling now than ever.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Röntgen#/media/File:First_medical_X-ray_by_Wilhelm_Röntgen_of_his_wife_Anna_Bertha_Ludwig's_hand_-_18951222.jpg
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X:_The_Man_with_the_X-ray_Eyes#/media/File:X-RayEyes_Rep.jpg
[3]https://medium.com/stanford-ai-for-healthcare/superman-isnt-the-only-one-with-x-ray-vision-deep-learning-for-ct-scans-290aaa7ba5c1
[4] http://www.kleefeldoncomics.com/2020/07/supermans-developing-power-set.html
[5] https://clickamericana.com/topics/health-medicine/how-x-ray-shoe-fittings-used-to-really-be-a-thing-years-ago
[6] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/clarence-dally-the-man-who-gave-thomas-edison-x-ray-vision-123713565/
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_specs#/media/File:X-Ray_Spex.jpg
[8] https://www.spectarama.com/blog/x-the-man-with-the-x-ray-eyes.html
[9] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1937/5/10/million-volt-x-ray-machine-replaces-former-cancer-killer/
[10] https://www.newspapers.com/article/-unwarranted-fear-radiophobia-1960/10421056/

• Barbara Hammer and the X-rays of James Sibley Watson
• Filmmaker Ira Goryainova On Hot Docs Selection BILE
• Plant Medicine, Healing, and Ayahuasca in Icaros: A Vision

LEONARDO DA VINCI. Dir. Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon. “Few historical figures loom larger in our modern consciousness than Leonardo da Vinci—whose legend has only grown in the 500 years since his death—and no single work in the Leonardo literature has achieved the cumulative force of Ken Burns’ latest opus [. . .] LEONARDO immerses us into a propulsive stream of big ideas inside a metaverse of imagery [. . .] a joyous, inspirational energy, a reminder of our human potential.”

LEONARDO DA VINCI received a Sloan grant in 2023 and will air on PBS November 18 and 19, 2024.

THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT. Dirs. Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos, Jon Shenk. “Using an astounding array of archival footage, THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT tells the story— complete with White House intrigue and political one-upmanship—of the environmentalist-turned-EPA-head William Reilly, who finds himself at odds with George H.W. Bush’s Machiavellian chief of staff John Sununu. The outcomes of their clashes will have truly planetary repercussions. Brilliantly constructed, with a cinematically unsettling score by Ariel Marx, the film will grab the attention even of audiences who think they’ve seen it all when it comes to impending global disasters . . .”

Still from THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT. Courtesy of TFF.

THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT received a Sloan grant in 2024. Following its world premiere at Telluride, a private screening of the film recently kicked off the 2024 Climate Film Festival with an introduction by Al Gore.

• Science Films at NYFF 2024
• Science Films at CIFF 2024
• Two New Sloan-Funded Documentaries

As part of the showcase, two science-forward films are highlighted each year, including one Official Selection from the festival. This year’s selection was Nacho Vigalondo’s DANIELA FOREVER, making its world premiere in the festival’s Platform section. A romantic work of science fiction reminiscent of ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, the film follows Henry Golding (CRAZY RICH ASIANS) as Nick, a DJ whose life in Madrid is marred by the recent loss of his lover, Daniela (THE WHITE LOTUS’S Beatrice Grannò.) Grief-stricken and depressed, he enrolls in a clinical trial which enables him to experience lucid dreams. Defying the parameters of the experiment, Nick instead harnesses his lucid dreams as a means to reconnect with Daniela.

As part of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s ongoing mission to bridge the two cultures of science and the humanities, the Sloan Science on Film Showcase entails a post-screening discussion between a member of the film team and a scientific expert. Following the September 7 screening, director Nacho Vigalondo was joined by Dr. Michelle Carr, an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry and Addictology at the University of Montreal whose research in neuroscience and psychology have made her not only an expert in the field of lucid dreaming, but a pioneer in dream engineering.

The discussion can be watched in its entirety below. Science & Film’s Sonia Epstein also spoke with Nacho Vigalondo on the ground at TIFF, check out that interview here.

• Science Films at TIFF 2024
• 2024 TIFF Sloan Science and Technology Project Pitch
• Director Interview: Molly McGlynn on FITTING IN

Science & Film: How did you arrive at lucid dreaming as a central plot point for this story?

Nacho Vigalondo: I remember many, many years ago, I was thinking, what if you have a dream in a movie and the conclusion of the movie happens within that dream? What if you start a movie with a character and in the midpoint, that character has a dream, and we stay for the rest of the movie within the dream? What if you have a flashback and the movie ends within the flashback? What if we break the narrative for real? I have a ton of ideas like that. They are these kind of abstract jokes, not like real premises, but they are just sitting there in case anything works for me at any time.

It wasn't until I wanted to talk about grief and depression and addiction—those three things combined, coming, of course, from personal experiences—it wasn't until that time that I came up with the idea: what if we can escape from all those states of mind through dreams, through dreams that actually kind of happen narratively because the character is building them. But what if there are consequences? So, as you can see, lucid dreams, they are not the starting point, but they become a beautiful way to describe everything I need. Lucid dreams are a tool to make the movie more specific and less abstract.

I think the fact that lucid dreams are real, and the fact that some people are able to achieve that is, for me, it's mind blowing. Because it's like living within science fiction. I guess we are already living in a science fiction reality, because we have the AI thing, which we kind of get used really quick, which is something that fascinates me. Like, if the aliens suddenly come by and say hi, we will get used to that in hours. And to me, the fact that some people can have the discipline to achieve lucid dreams, which means an alternate reality by design, is for me, mind-blowing.

S&F: Have you ever tried?

NV: There's no way I can try. Let's put it this way: if ADHD was a can of beans, my face would be on the sticker. I was recently diagnosed, and all the questions were answered. My brain only accepts discipline under really, really specific circumstances. Once I heard that you need to do some mental exercises in order to make lucid dreams, I knew instantly that it was impossible for me. I don't even have normal dreams. I don't even remember them. Just a bunch of them all my life [I have remembered].

It's kind of sad. It's night, I go to bed, and my brain has unlimited budget for me to enjoy. This is not a joke. This is real. I never had what you human beings call a wet dream, never, ever. But I remember like a couple of dreams in which everything is pointing to that direction, but I wake up right before anything happens. So it's like my brain is flipping the bird on me. I don't actually know what dreams are, but I know they hate me. I know they have no meaning in the way some people try to interpret them.

Courtesy of TIFF

S&F: In the film, Henry’s character begins trying to figure out some of the logic in the dream world. For you, in terms of the writing, did you want to define the logic of the dream world?

NV: There was a dialog that was cut in the film because it felt like too many words, and it was about this character saying, this is like the opposite of a dream, because a dream is just like this chaotic dive into the subconscious, and everything is made out of symbols. When I try to describe dreams to myself, I think of the movie FANTASIA—it's pure, irrational things thrown at your senses. But here we're doing the opposite.

One person in the audience asked, tell me about the dream logic in this film. There is a lack of dream logic, because he's like turning the dream world into a parking lot. It's kind of sad in that way. This guy is using the dream world to make it become like the everyday; normal life, my flat, my street, my girlfriend, my everything. Initially, he's not falling into the temptation of going through a power fantasy thing. He's not becoming a superhero, he's just trying to reach what he lacks the most, which is a normal existence, which I felt was really interesting. Using this kind of alternate universe so we can reach the mundane. That was really important for me at the beginning of the process. So, the rules had to be kind of boring.

S&F: Can you talk about the two modes that you film in, to distinguish between dream world and reality?

NV: The dreams are shot with the same cameras and the same tapes that I used when I was a teenager, and I was directing short films. When you are in your mid 20s and you are starting to think of yourself as a filmmaker, and you use these cameras, it was my case and many, many, guys around me, we were trying to disguise the signal into a movie. Putting in the black bars, using the lighting in a way that kind of reminds you of an American feature film… As years go by, you look back and you realize that, oh my god, the real property of those cameras, they do not have the property of celluloid, they don't have the property of the digital element, this is a completely different thing, and the nature of what you're shooting is completely different. I just realized now in my late 40s, that I have a fetishistic attraction to magnetic tapes. People tend to think about the distance between celluloid and digital. This is the other angle. If you shoot something on a magnetic tape, you are moving away from digital. You're moving away from celluloid in a similar way. And for me, being able to deal with those two radically different film stocks was amazing.

Courtesy of TIFF

S&F: Did you work with the same DP for both modes of shooting?

NV: Yeah. He was so excited, too. Because the aspect ratio in the film changes all the time, some people think that is a decision that we made. That is not actually a decision, because when you shoot with these old-fashioned cameras, that's a full signal. So that's a limitation, and I love it as a limitation. I feel that as a decision, changing the aspect ratio is not a novelty anymore. We have seen that many times in recent films. But to having that imposed by the cameras that you're using, that is really exciting.

We're shooting the same guy, with the same clothes, in the same flat, I just needed the camera itself to create the sense of a completely different universe. It would be okay to just change the color temperature or the texture of the image itself. It would be okay to play with filters and everything, so we know where we are. But in this case, what's in front of camera is exactly the same.

S&F: Lastly, I wanted to ask you about the casting. The film is shot in Madrid but it stars two people who are foreigners. Did that come from the casting, or was that part of the story to begin with?

NV: When you write a movie, you don't know if it's going to be made, first of all. You don't know if it's going to be a small production made with a few people or if it's going to become an international film. I never expect the movie to have any specific size. I always have budget in mind. I always try to stick to few locations, and I don't want to go crazy with the VFX needed. So the way I wrote it, it could be a couple in New York or maybe in Toronto or in Madrid, but once the cast becomes real, you always go back to the script, and you adapt the script to the to the cast. And in this case, it was like, okay, it seems like the movie is going to be English language. Because of tax bullshit things, it's going to be better for us if we shoot in Madrid—I prefer to shoot in Madrid, because I know the city. I felt to myself that it's so easy to turn the characters into strangers in a city that they don't know. Oh, my God, that's Stephen King. I am the biggest fan; I am so happy.

S&F: Do you want go say hi?

NV: No, no, no, no no. I would never bother him. I love him. Even as a person, not only as a writer, I love him. I love to listen to him. So where was I?

S&F: It was easy to turn the characters into strangers...

NV: If I work hard at turning the story into one about these characters who can stay Madrid for a reason, and they are kind of lost in the city for these different reasons. And they find each other, then I can add the way each one of them relates to the city. And then, as the movie goes on, the fact that they are isolated in the city means that they are isolated in a different Madrid within Henry's dream. And you know what? If they are, let's say, foreigners in Spain, all the other characters they can speak in English without pretending to have the perfect accent. That was, for me, perfect, because it's allowing people to be natural on screen.

♦

• Director Interview: Molly McGlynn on FITTING IN
• Shuffling the Deck: Gary Hustwit on ENO
• Collective: Unconscious

Science & Film: Sound is very present in the film from the beginning—you hear the squelching of the fig, he's watching an ASMR channel... How did you think about sound in relation to the theme of the film, which is so visual?

Thibault Emin: Sound is so much about the feeling. My goal with sound was really to get into something immersive, but it concerns mostly the second part of the film, more than the first. My favorite films with sound are BLADE RUNNER and David Lynch's ERASERHEAD. Movies that have this immersive quality through sound—that was my conscious goal with the sound designer. It's what I like in the ambient music too; abolishing the border between sound and music, which I guess is related to the story, what the movie is about.

Courtesy of TIFF

S&F: Could you speak to your inspiration for this virus?

TE: The inspiration was, well, of course, David Cronenberg's films that are really important to me and also Mood Indigo, the Boris Vian novel that I read when I was young. This way of making emotions turn into real stuff happening in the movie's reality, I think it's really about this. This is common to some of Cronenberg's films and their surrealistic logic. These are important inspirations.

I'm a very abstract person. I studied philosophy before cinema and so everything came from ideas in this project. What was first there was the ending, this idea of everything merging together. I don't want to say too much... So, the whole question was how to eventually get there. And that's where the virus came from. For me, we're not even sure that it is a virus in the film. But the virus is, for me, the starting point, because it's the most obvious and it's what we all fear. When something is new, we always think of a virus, and it's become more obvious with COVID. But actually, the film was written even before, and COVID was confirming something that was already there. The virus is, for me, the illusion of fear that we can feel in front of something unknown. Viruses, as Cronenberg would say, are not always a threat. They can also be maybe a life form. Maybe life is a virus at the beginning.

S&F: I was going to ask probably the obvious question, which is how the pandemic that we are all familiar with impacted your development of this story, and it's interesting to hear that you were working on it beforehand.

TE: Yes. Actually, I was quite disappointed when COVID came, because it ruined by my story. Especially the idea of lockdown. I mean, I really wrote a whole part of the film about a lockdown before the actual lockdown. What was the point, when it became real and so familiar to all of us? But I hope that's a way that the audience can relate, maybe better now, to the film.

S&F: Despite the conceptual nature of the premise, you integrate some scientific videos throughout the film. Did you consult with any scientists during the writing or filmmaking process?

TE: No, I did not consult except for one thing. The story of the deepness—I'm not sure how to say it in English, the first fish that could breathe out of water that is told later in the film. This is the only pseudo-scientific element that came from a biologist friend who told me about this fish. I'm not into science at all. I'm kind of rather a literary person, so actually, it was a challenge for me and for from my friend who wrote with me, to not be too surrealistic, because I am more thinking in a surrealistic way, and that's what interests me in movies. Scientific realism doesn't really turn me on. I know a lot of people love it, but it's not my relationship with sci-fi and imaginary worlds, I prefer dream-like logic and philosophical intellectual logic or emotional logic. But yes, we gathered a lot of different images and sources of inspiration, and the video of the cells merging together came rather late in the process. One friend told me, you should have this kind of image in the film to show the process. And I said, of course, it's obvious. I've been working on this 10 years, and I never thought of it. That's how it came to be.

Courtesy of TIFF

S&F: There is a lot of humor in the film, which is surprising for its subject matter.

TE: It came through the process of writing, but yes, it was important to me. Actually, the movie was supposed to be a lot funnier in its first part, but a lot of the jokes didn't work, so we just had to cut them. But yes, humor was very, very important to me, and maybe not taking things too seriously. At some point it became a problem in the process of editing, especially because test viewers always told us, well, there are too many jokes, you have to take your own story seriously, otherwise we will never be afraid, we won't believe it. So it took many, many months for me and the editor to say, let's cut a lot of jokes, a lot of fun, because we have to take it seriously. I think it's even not serious enough in the actual movie now maybe. The female character is inspired by a girlfriend of mine, my first great love story when I was 20 years old, and she was a little bit like that.

♦

• Mali Elfman's Ghost Universe: NEXT EXIT
• Director Interview: Jane Schoenbrun
• Barnett Brettler’s Insomniac Horror Film

Hosted by comedian Carolyn Taylor, the program kicked off with welcome remarks from TIFF Chief Business & Marketing Officer Jennifer Frees and Vice President and Program Director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Doron Weber. Read more about this year’s artists and their projects below.

PUSH THE BUTTON by Anton Källrot

Anton Källrot kicked off his pitch by posing questions directly to the audience. “Do you feel your phone occupies too much of your time?” Audience members replied with a resounding, “Yes.”

“If you could push a button that would limit the algorithm designed to keep us you addicted to your phones, would you?” Again, audience members replied in the affirmative.

Pitched as if LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE was remade by Paul Schrader, Källrot’s feature film seeks to explore the corrosive impact of phone addiction on modern society. It follows a young journalist whose research on tech addiction puts her on the trail of Puck, an enigmatic figure whose anti-technology beliefs have garnered him a cult-like following. However, the question remains: Is Puck’s plan to blow up a server wall an act of radical liberation or merely senseless terrorism?

Källot closed his pitch – which panelists praised for its interactive nature and playful sense of humor – with a clip of Prince’s prescient speech at the 1999 Yahoo Internet Awards. Check it out below.

LUCID by Mia Mullarky

Mia Mullarky’s LUCID draws from her own longstanding interest in psychiatry. The daughter of an arts therapist and a psychotherapist, Mullarky received her bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Science and worked as a behavioral psychologist before pivoting to filmmaking. Fascinated by the human mind, she characterized her project as her “ode to consciousness.”

With LUCID, Mullarky hopes to subvert the cinematic trope of the woman created by man, referencing films such as METROPOLIS, POOR THINGS, and EX MACHINA. Drawing from her personal experience, LUCID features a female psychotherapist met with the harrowing possibility that she may not exist, illuminating how constant advancements in artificial intelligence threaten to redefine our understanding of sentience.

Citing works such as SOLARIS, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, INTERSTELLAR, and Frida Kahlo’s painting The Two Fridas, Mullarky is looking to attach a producer while she revises the script. “I will be primarily working with humans on this project,” Mullarky joked in closing.

The Two Fridas (Las dos Fridas), Frida Kahlo, 1939. Image courtesy of Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City.

LIBERATION by Norman Yi Li

Norman Yi Li’s LIBERATION is an eco-thriller centered around Morgan, a vegan scientist who finds her career stalled by her refusal to participate in animal testing. She is approached by an animal rights activist named Wade who hopes to enlist her in his radical plan: spread the mosquito and tick born Alpha-gal syndrome among the human population. Alpha-gal syndrome has made headlines in recent years, as it causes a severe meat allergy in humans. Though Morgan declines, Wade does manage to recruit her teenage daughter Ash, leading to a devasting sequence of events that puts her entire family in jeopardy.

Li shared his own relationship to the subject matter, noting that while he began work on LIBERATION as a meat lover hoping to satirize radical vegan culture, the project’s tone has shifted along with his eating habits. Startling facts that arose during his research – that livestock supply chains account for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, for instance – have made him a vegetarian.

Initially conceived as a limited series, YI is now reworking LIBERATION into a feature film in the vein of HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE with an aesthetic reminiscent of FIGHT CLUB. Yi concluded his pitch with a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote evocative of the project’s ethos: “You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.”

Anton Källrot, Mia Mullarky, Norman Yi Li and Justine Beed on stage at the 2024 TIFF Sloan Science and Technology Project Pitch, September 9, 2024. Photo Credit: Sarah Luciano

LA FORZA by Justine Beed

Finally, multiple Sloan award winner Justine Beed took the stage. Beed’s participation in the pitch marks her fourth recognition from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation over the course of two years. In 2023, she earned the USC Sloan Screenwriting Grant, participated in the Fall Athena Film Festival Fellowship, and won the Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize. In the subsequent months, Beed has worked with industry and science advisors to expand and refine her limited series LA FORZA, not only revising it from a half hour to a one hour format, but building out a detailed three-season arc.

Beed’s LA FORZA tells the story of Laura Bassi, an 18th century physicist who made history by becoming the first female professor in the world to receive her doctorate. After discovering Bassi through a Google doodle, Beed became fascinated by not only Bassi’s history-making achievements but her complicated love story. Bassi’s husband Giuseppe Veratti was also a scientist and fellow lecturer at the University of Bologna, which ultimately led to a sophisticated working and romantic relationship but often put them in competition with one another professionally. LA FORZA promises to tease out this love story like so many of the BBC period dramas that Beed grew up watching.

Beed also cited projects such as THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT, ANNIE WITH AN E, and AMADEUS as touchstones for LA FORZA, though her series will have anachronistic touches reminiscent of DICKINSON and THE GREAT.

Panelists were impressed by how much of herself Beed put into the pitch and expressed excitement about diving into the world of 18th Century Bologna on screen.

Read more about the pitch participants here, and stay tuned for updates on these projects as they develop.

• Sloan Projects at TIFF
• Meet the Filmmaker: Justine Beed on LA FORZA
• Science Films at TIFF 2024

Among the selection below, S&F also recommends Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos, and Jon Shenk’s Sloan-supported documentary THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT, which revisits pivotal moments across the late 20th century – including George H. W. Bush’s administration – which could have had an impact in mitigating today’s ongoing climate crisis but failed to do so.

FEATURES

APPLE CIDER VINEGAR. Dir. Sofie Benoot. “A retired narrator from iconic nature documentaries with names like PLANET and EARTH embarks on one last global treasure hunt. Inspired by her kidney stone's curious oval shape, this familiar voice guides us on a whimsical journey, unveiling the hidden wonders of rocks and their gravitational pull on those who dare to look closer. . .”

Still from APPLE CIDER VINEGAR. Courtesy of CIFF.

EASTERN ANTHEMS. Dir. Matthew Wolkow, Jean-Jacques Martinod. “. . . centered around the return of the American Great Eastern Brood X cicadas, a long-distance conversation between two friends becomes the lifeline of an unfinished film. Measuring time through the cicadas' return provides a pulse for a post-pandemic moment in US history and invokes a reflection of our collective futures [ . . .] highlighting the power of nature as it interweaves socio-political narratives and ecological cycles.”

ENO. Dir. Gary Hustwit. “Visionary musician and artist Brian Eno — known for producing David Bowie, U2, Talking Heads, among many others; pioneering the genre of ambient music; and releasing over 40 solo and collaboration albums — reveals his creative processes in this groundbreaking generative documentary: a film that’s different every time it’s shown.”

WELCOME INTERPLANETARY AND SIDEREAL SPACE CONQUERORS. Dir. Andrés Jurado. “In 1963, NASA astronauts underwent survival training in the Colombian jungle. Amongst them was Neil Armstrong. Through creative use of archival footage, documents, and sound recordings, the film explores this surreal encounter, presenting a counter-history that examines colonialism, space exploration, and historical memory. . .”

Still from WELCOME INTERPLANETARY AND SIDEREAL SPACE CONQUERORS. Courtesy of CIFF.

THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT. Dirs. Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos, Jon Shenk. “When George H.W. Bush won the presidency in 1988, scientists had already been warning for years of the dangers of global warming. Bush promised to counter the ‘greenhouse effect’ with the ‘White House Effect,’ but his administration’s ties to the fossil fuel industry soon undermined efforts to environmentalist intentions.”

WILFRED BUCK. Dir. Lisa Jackson. “Moving between earth and stars, past and present, this hybrid feature documentary follows the extraordinary life of Wilfred Buck, a charismatic and irreverent Indigenous elder who overcame a harrowing history of displacement, racism, and addiction by reclaiming ancestral star knowledge and ceremony.”

SHORTS

A BODY CALLED LIFE. Dir. Spencer MacDonald. “A self-isolated young human delves into the hidden world of microscopic organisms, forging a tender connection with these nearly invisible creatures and developing a massive online following, as he seeks to understand his own place in the cosmos and accept the scars of his past.”

THE COMEBACK MILL. Dir. Josh Gerritsen. “In Maine, where paper mills have long been central to communities, an architect and chemist embark on a multimillion-dollar project to repurpose a closed paper mill in Madison, transforming it into a wood fiber insulation manufacturing facility over four years.”

DULL SPOTS OF GREENISH COLOURS. Dir. Sasha Svirisky. “War for our attention has suddenly become an actual war. Information technologies appear not just as mere means for somebody’s ends but as something having their agency, as one of the acting forces rendering possible a horrific event, which is very hard to accept and almost impossible to comprehend. We have no control over it and are doomed to scroll through the newsfeed.”

Still from DULL SPOTS OF GREENISH COLOURS. Courtesy of CIFF.

FAMILIA. Dir. Picho Garcia, Gabriela Pena. “With the help of his friends, Picho coordinates through WhatsApp to get a profile picture that represents him. Meanwhile, there’s a crisis on the family WhatsApp chat: the demand to be present during the dizzying loss of autonomy of his grandfather, the patriarch of the family. Between missed calls, bombardment of images, emojis and stickers, we access the digital intimacy of a young man conflicted with the expectations of others and his own.”

PERFECTLY A STRANGENESS. Dir. Alison McAlpine. “In the dazzling incandescence of an unknown desert, three donkeys discover an abandoned astronomical observatory and the universe. A sensorial, cinematic exploration of what a story can be.”

• Shuffling the Deck: Gary Hustwit on ENO
• Preview of Science Films at CIFF 2023
• Director Interview: Ian Cheney on THE ARC OF OBLIVION

Science & Film: Could you speak a bit about working in different modalities in the making of this film–scripted, archival, documentary–and why that made sense to you for this story?

Emily Packer: The longer I've been in documentary, the less I feel tethered to a specific mode of storytelling. The more I see the puppet strings that go into documentary storytelling, the more I feel ready to break form. There seems to be more of a palette for it these days, everything from the Ross Brothers doing documentary that's very scripted, to like, I don't know. I just think that if we as doc filmmakers are being more honest about our process, there's so much more possibility. And I think sometimes being over the top, or even a little campy about it, that feels more honest to me.

There were things that we decided were really important to the lens that we were seeing the oyster with and were informing our new understanding of the oyster. Those were things that we couldn't necessarily overhear, and so that created an invitation for us to break outside of the box. We tried to treat each theme with its own set of rules. We would find a lot of crossover between things that we had shot in the verité, and things that we wanted to do, that we had scripted out, and that also sort of allowed us to figure out what was the story, and what was maybe overkill, or what was going to blend these ideas together.

At the start of the project, I think that I pitched this to my team as a short, straightforward enviro doc that was just going to talk about the journey of the oyster shell as a cyclical cycle, as opposed to a linear one. And then shortly after pitching that idea and starting our research, we saw a short documentary that did exactly that. There was a small amount of disappointment in finding that out, but it was also relieving, because we were like, great, we don't have to make that, someone else made that. We get to do something else now and if someone wants to see that movie, it already exists.

An extreme close up of an oyster dripping succulent juices into an open mouth. Photo by Ben Stil. Pictured: Avery Osajima.

S&F: What drew you to oysters to begin with?

EP: I had been doing research about New York's waterways for a short film that I made with Lesley Steele called BY WAY OF CANARSIE. We had been prompted by a fellowship with Union Docs to be looking into transit. And so, we were thinking about resources a lot, and we were thinking about the water a lot. Lesley and I both feel very spiritually drawn to the water, and I almost feel more honest about that spiritualism because of working with her. We started looking into a potential ferry that some folks in the community wanted in Canarsie, Brooklyn. We were thinking, if this ferry is to happen, what will change? What will change about the community that exists here already? What will change about the underwater ecosystem? It was around that time that I learned about the Billion Oyster Project whose goal is to plant one billion oysters into the New York Harbor. I was really caught up by that billion number. It felt sort of arbitrary to me in some ways. What will happen if they hit a billion? Why is that the goal? I also starting to think about, like, what we as the city are willing to invest in our future. And so, while we were watching tons of resources being poured into, honestly, a not very well thought out plan to rehabilitate the L train after Hurricane Sandy, and also thinking about billions of resources being pushed into the water a little oyster at a time... In some ways that was really what interested me about the oyster. It was not just it as a creature or it as a food or anything, but it as this emblem for New Yorkers and for the idea of a collective project.

S&F: I saw in the credits you had an environmental consultant. I'm curious who that person was, why that felt important to you, and how you navigated working with experts in the field with this project?

EP: We interacted with a number of experts, but we ended up calling a few folks consultants, including the more environmentalist consultant Kate Boicourt. When I met her, she was working at the Waterfront Alliance, which is a large-scale organization that I feel really connected to the mission of, about access to the waterfronts. It's sort of an umbrella organization that ties together a lot of different things happening throughout the city. And so, she and I felt aligned in our understanding of New York. And then she ended up working for the Environmental Defense Fund. We shared cuts [of the film] with her. I talked to her about how important it is to for the audience to understand the specifics of the science when it comes to, like, the biological reproductive cycle of the oysters, and also the question: How wide is the scope of the science that we're covering? And the difference between an audience's understanding when they get out of the film, but also our understanding as we're making the thing. There are some facts and larger-scale understandings that have totally led to why we're doing things a certain way, but they are not necessarily going to be translatable to the audience. And so picking and choosing what is actually important for the audience to walk away knowing. Some of that was determined by our themes, and some of it was determined by those conversations with her. The film was much more stylistic than Kate had prepared for, and we have gotten to talking about educational asides that we might make. But overall, I think she was really instrumental in making sure that we took all [those questions] into consideration.

We also had a poetic consultant or two, which was really fun. One of them has an MA in poetry and both of them are trans. We wanted to also throw that expertise in the mix of, like, how are we using language? What does it mean for us to write a water acknowledgement that comes back into the piece? One of the biggest things that their consultancy created for me was a different way of understanding the language from the beginning of the film to the end of the film. What is the actual transformation?

And then we had some more sociological consultants, who were folks who were studying the oyster as a historical device in Long Island specifically. It was really great to chat with those two people who know so much about it and got to recommend different places that we do research or for us to film. We could only learn so much in four years of doing research about this but being able to tap into different knowledge was super helpful.

A young Black trans woman emerges from a shell in a queer recreation of the early film “Birth of a Pearl” (1901, Armitage). Photo by Lucas C. Ospina. Pictured (L to R): Meagan Dolbey, Aasia Taylor-Patterson, Emily Packer.

S&F: Were there aspects of the history or science of the oyster that you came across in your research that you were surprised hadn't been surfaced before?

EP: Definitely. There are even things that we didn't feel we could cover adequately, that I sometimes wish had been able to be a part of the film. But I think for who our team was and the time that we were making it, which was mostly during COVID, the scope of it that we were able to cover turned out to be very personal to us. But there are so many more stories. There's all this history with the Sandy Ground Historical Society, which is about the community of freed black oyster men who came up from the Carolinas to create one of the first free communities, and they built their whole infrastructure off of the oysters and their knowledge of oystering. I would have loved to do more with that story but, unfortunately, because the main keepers of that knowledge were rebuilding their organization after Hurricane Ida... All of the crossover was so plain to me, of how environmental crises are affecting different communities differently, and this was just something that we couldn't pursue. I honestly think that there's more to be told, and there's more to be told by different filmmakers.

S&F: Now that the film is coming out, do you have any hopes for the takeaways people might have from it?

EP: I've been thinking a lot about something that I've called avenues of access, or different audiences getting a different read on the film depending on what knowledge they have. In test screenings, I've been very relieved and very happy with how different folks interact with that information. For example, I did a small screening with mostly queer and trans community members out of Santa Cruz in April. It was really wonderful because this was the first audience where, once the lights came up, everyone could talk about it as a queer movie and as a trans movie, and that audience got what I wanted out of framing the queer gaze on the oyster and utilizing that as sort of a film theory praxis. They had new and better interpretations of some of the narrative that I had not even thought of, and that was really affirming. I hope for more of that.

I also, you know, I do hope that, although it's not an activist film, I do hope that it helps to recreate the narrative for the oyster in New York City, such that the environmental groups that are doing the work can be better bolstered. One of the organizations that we have in the film is the SCAPE landscape architecture firm and Pippa Brashear, who we interviewed, is really clear about the fact that, in order for their work to happen, in order for it to be publicly supported, we have to change the story of what the oyster has been in New York. I think that this reframing is the best thing I could hope for. It's not just seeing this creature as absolutely vital to the ecosystem that is going to support New York into the future as a natural space and a city space, but people also remember that this food is living, that this creature that is so necessary for our survival is trans and has this incredible capability of change. The hope is that we start to see less of an anomaly in that transness and more of a huge, powerful tool that can also be understood as sort of humanist.

♦

• A Conversation With Joan Jonas, Moving Off The Land
• Layer by Layer: Interview with Artist Linnéa Gad
• Victor Kosskovsky On Making AQUARELA

In the context of the search for extraterrestrial life and this experiment, Jenkins might be dismissed as a footnote. However, in the context of the history of the moving image, by 1924 he was already a pioneer. The year prior, Jenkins became the first person to transmit moving images to a receiver without wires and in 1925 his public demonstration of wireless audiovisual transmission led to a U.S. patent. By 1928, he opened the first television broadcasting station in the United States, airing four hours of programming each weekday. How did individual Americans access such broadcasts, decades before television sets would become a household item? Enter the Radiovisor, a kit amateurs could build at home and “tune in” to Jenkins’s programs. While a 1928 model resides at the Henry Ford Museum, Jenkins went on to improve the device for years, and the Model 100 Radiovisor – released in 1931 and sold for $69.95 each – can be seen at Museum of the Moving Image.

Image of the Radiovisor Model 100. Courtesy of Museum of the Moving Image.

Another scientist, Guglielmo Marconi, is briefly mentioned in the New York Times piece. Marconi’s speculation about the existence of extraterrestrial life is cited as having legitimized the widespread belief in Martian life at the time. Why? However misguided his speculation, Marconi’s reputation was bolstered by his creation of the first commercially viable long-range radio transmission system in 1895 -- a reputation burnished by the Nobel Prize he received in 1909. Marconi’s early work serves as the inspiration for Chris Farrington’s short film SIGNAL, which received a USC/Sloan Production Awards in 2008 and is one of the films in Sloan Science & Film’s online streaming library that can be accessed for free and used in the classroom. Watch the film here.

• Shuffling the Deck: Gary Hustwit on ENO
• Preview of Science Films at CIFF 2023
• Director Interview: Ian Cheney on THE ARC OF OBLIVION

Highlights include HAPPYEND, the fiction feature film debut of Neo Sora, whose acclaimed concert documentary RYUICHI SAKAMOTO | OPUS premiered at last year’s New York Film Festival. Set in a near-future Tokyo, the drama explores Japanese youth culture’s evolution in the face of mounting political and environmental threats.

For cinephiles seeking a respite from anxieties around technology and the future, two of our selections from the festival’s Currents program – both featuring scientists devoted to nature – might appeal. In Jem Cohen’s LITTLE, BIG, AND FAR, a septuagenarian astronomer seeks the ideal mountaintop from which to stargaze, while Pierre Creton’s 7 WALKS WITH MARK BROWN follows the titular paleobotanist to seven French locales in his search for plants native to Normandy’s Pays des Caux region.

Sloan Science & Film will be covering the festival citywide, so stay tuned.

MAIN SLATE

HAPPYEND. Dir. Neo Sora. U.S. Premiere. “ . . . best friends since childhood, Kou (Yukito Hidaka) and Yuta (Hayato Kurihara), run afoul of their disciplinarian principal (Shiro Sano), who has installed a draconian surveillance system after being the target of an elaborate prank. As the boys try to figure out how to align themselves within the increasingly oppressive education system, larger external forces summon further threats, including constant looming natural disasters.”

Still from HAPPYEND. Courtesy of New York Film Festival.

THE SHROUDS. Dir. David Cronenberg. U.S. Premiere. “In David Cronenberg’s sly and thought-provoking latest, techno-entrepreneur Karsh (Vincent Cassel) has developed a new software that will allow the bereaved to bear witness to the gradual decay of loved ones dead and buried in the earth. While reeling from the loss of his wife (Diane Kruger), Karsh uncovers a potentially vast conspiracy.”

STRANGER EYES. Dir. Yeo Siew Hua. North American Premiere. “A young married couple’s baby daughter goes missing and suspicion falls on their voyeur neighbor (Lee Kang-sheng, the star of Tsai Ming-liang’s films) in Singaporean writer-director Yeo Siew Hua’s riveting and unsettling thriller about contemporary surveillance culture and the mysteries of the human heart.”

Still from STRANGER EYES. Courtesy of New York Film Festival.

CURRENTS

LITTLE, BIG, AND FAR. Dir. Jem Cohen. World Premiere. “In the meditative and expansive new film from Jem Cohen (MUSEUM HOURS), an Austrian astronomer named Karl, who has been re-evaluating his work and life after turning 70, travels to a mountaintop on a Greek island in search of the darkest sky against which to view the cosmos.”

Still from LITTLE, BIG, AND FAR. Courtesy of New York Film Festival.

7 WALKS WITH MARK BROWN. Dir. Pierre Creton, Vincent Barré. U.S. Premiere. “Accompanied by a small filming crew, Pierre Creton and Mark Barré follow paleobotanist Mark Brown across the Pays des Caux region in Normandy as he seeks out native plants from which an ancient garden could be created and explains, with the loving tenderness of a true expert, the etymology, beauty, and scientific properties of the region’s flora.”

THE SUIT. Dir. Heinz Emigholz. North American Premiere. “That loquacious cynic known as ‘Old White Male,’ played by John Erdman in Heinz Emigholz’s 2020 film THE LOBBY returns in this delirious, sci-fi-comic follow-up [. . . ] THE SUIT gives Erdman ample room to expound upon cinema, the corporeal vs. the digital, the apocalypse, architecture, health and nutrition, and what it means to see and be seen in a world that’s increasingly turning inward.”

CURRENTS SHORTS

TRACK_ING. Dir. Chanyeol Lee, Hanna Cho, Samgar Rakym, Ali Tynybekov. North American Premiere. “The emerging field of computer vision turns its powers toward one of cinema’s earliest subjects: the train journey. With surprising insights and occasional poetry, software follows the human along old routes of imperial expansion, across borders of landscape and language.” (Currents Program 2)

EFFORTS OF NATURE. Dir. Morgan Quaintance. “In EFFORTS OF NATURE, a poem by Yusef Komunyakaa, a skewed Bach aria, and throbbing electronics are set against the oceanic oozing pixels of digitized video images, monochromatic aurorae seen from space, and a disjointed inner monologue haunted by the language of wellness. This seemingly disparate corpus of material is composited into an affecting whole [. . . ] a paranoid meditation on chronic pain, recovery, and physical, mental, and planetary states of dissolution.” (Currents Program 2)

GRANDMAMAUNTSISTERCAT. Dir. Zuza Banasińska. “Assembling communist-era propaganda from the Educational Film Studio in Łódź, Poland, the playful and sinister GRANDMAMAUNTSISTERCAT recasts Baba Jaga, the fabled witch of Slavic folklore, as a prehistoric, matriarchal goddess and anti-anthropocentric icon. Collecting, collaging, and warping a vivid bounty of archival images, filmmaker Zuza Banasińska exposes their patriarchal ideologies and representational strictures and detonates them in the name of liberation.” (Currents Program 3)

JIZAI. Dir. Maiko Endo. North American Premiere. “The imaginative powers of the child are augmented by Maiko Endo’s near-future fabulations. Reverberations of Chris Marker’s LA JETÉE can be felt as technologists test ocular and robotic instruments real or imagined, in the lab and in the field. They whisper about ‘the third eye’ as their young subjects grope toward a livable future for humanity among terrestrial elements or the stars.” (Currents Program 3)

Still from JIZAI. Courtesy of New York Film Festival.

LIKE AN OUTBURST. Dir. Sebastián Schjaer. World Premiere. “Microorganisms float against a desert landscape, the lights from cellphone towers blink like fireflies, and a mysterious dialogue between two minds adjusting to a new beginning. In Sebastián Schjaer’s LIKE AN OUTBURST, animals, humans, and machines seek a tenuous coexistence and different ways of seeing and living in the world.” (Currents Program 3)

REVOLVING ROUNDS. Dir. Christina Jauernik, Johann Lurf. U.S. Premiere. “Synchronized cameras trace a stereoscopic crawl through fields and greenhouses in early morning sunlight. An early-century 3-D device projects footage of a pea plant that shatters into a throbbing mass of particles to reveal the vibrant materiality of the film strip. In REVOLVING ROUNDS, Christina Jauernik and Johann Lurf lead the eye on a journey beyond dimensions of Cartesian space and familiar states of matter, an odyssey to the limits of perception and back.” (Currents Program 4)

THE LAND AT NIGHT. Dir. Richard Tuohy, Dianna Barrie. “Against a dense, sinister soundtrack of drones, bells, night creatures, and electric hum, flashes of illumination reveal a trembling crepuscular landscape in Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie’s THE LAND AT NIGHT. It’s a nocturnal ramble through dry grasslands, empty roads, and the skeletal remains of deserted dwellings.” (Currents Program 4)

ARCHIPELAGO OF EARTHEN BONES — TO BUNYA. Dir. Malena Szlam. U.S. Premiere. “The luminous flora, volcanic geographies, and plunging horizons of the Gondwana Rainforest in the eastern ranges of Australia metamorphose into an imaginary landscape in Malena Szlam’s ARCHIPELAGO OF EARTHEN BONES, in which 16mm in-camera editing and superimpositions suggest a lithic temporal scale, deconstructing and reforming desert, mountain, and sky in a dazzling palette of orange, black, and viridescence.” (Currents Program 4)

VIBRANT MATTER. Dir. Pablo Marín. U.S. Premiere. “A city, at once ancient and modern, emerges from among the brush. As wind works at the leaves, the grass, the microphone, the image is subject to its viewer’s hand, which sets snarls of traffic askew, flips a building like a coin, shakes the trees until they splinter. Pablo Marín sketches a suspension of the laws of physics, his compositions offer an idiosyncratic view of a metropolis in flux.” (Currents Program 5)

Still from VIBRANT MATTER. Courtesy of New York Film Festival.

SINKING FEELING. Dir. Zachary Epcar. World Premiere. “In Zachary Epcar’s SINKING FEELING, human bodies and voices are counterposed with the shimmering abstractions, ambient fizzle, and rigid linearity of corporate architecture. A disquieting glimpse into a post-post-modernity of dread and torpor, SINKING FEELING peels back the surfaces of these Ballardian non-places to release pent-up fluids, a stifled longing, a hidden radiance.” (Currents Program 5)

• Preview of Science Films at NYFF 2023
• Preview of Science Films at NYFF 2022
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The festival’s 49th edition also marks its second year in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. On September 9, the second annual Sloan Science and Technology Project Pitch will take place, offering writers the opportunity to participate in a non-competitive pitch of a science or technology-related feature film screenplay to a live audience of industry decision-makers.

The partnership also includes the Sloan Science on Film Showcase, which spotlights one science-forward title from the festival. Among the films listed below, Nacho Vigalondo’s DANIELA FOREVER is the 2024 showcase selection, which stars Henry Golding as a grief-stricken man who utilizes lucid dreaming to reconnect with a lost loved one. The September 7 screening will be followed by a conversation with director Nacho Vigalondo and a yet-to-be-announced scientific expert on the neuroscience behind lucid dreaming.

Sloan Science & Film will be covering TIFF, so stay tuned for features and interviews on many of the titles below.

CENTREPIECE

ADDITION. Dir. Marcelle Lunam. World Premiere. “A mathematician struggles to balance her compulsive counting habit (and imaginary friendship with Nikola Tesla) with a budding romance in this charming adaptation of Toni Jordan’s bestselling novel.”

AN UNFINISHED FILM. Dir. Lou Ye. North American Premiere. “Lou Ye recalls the days of the Chinese lockdown through a hybrid of documentary, web videos from the COVID era, and fragments from his past films, spinning a powerful drama in recognition of a nation’s collective trauma.”

CLOUD. Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa. North American Premiere. “Kiyoshi Kurosawa's CLOUD is a suspenseful thriller in which a young internet reseller, Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda) ignites a cyber-fueled storm of malice. Blurring digital and physical threats, it’s a chilling dive into the dark side of modern connectivity.”

HAPPYEND. Dir. Neo Sora. North American Premiere. “This beautifully crafted fiction feature debut from director Neo Sora transports us to a near-future Tokyo, a city on high alert for cataclysmic earthquakes and moving dangerously close to applying total surveillance to its public spaces.”

DISCOVERY

SEEDS. Dir. Kaniehtiio Horn. World Premiere. “Just as budding influencer Ziggy (Kaniehtiio Horn) lands a new client, a seed and fertilizer company called Nature’s Oath, and starts making content for them, she is called back to her community to house- sit for her aunt. As a shadowy figure follows her, Ziggy must protect herself, and her aunt’s cache of seeds.”

U ARE THE UNIVERSE. Dir. Pavlo Ostrikov. World Premiere. “After 150 years of using nuclear energy, humanity has accumulated more than 3 billion tons of waste, held in temporary storage facilities [. . . ] due to an increasing number of earthquakes, radiation is destroying life on the planet. Aboard a cargo ship named Obriy, Andriy is on a four-year round-trip mission to transport nuclear waste from Earth to Jupiter’s moon Callisto.”

GALA PRESENTATIONS

THE SHROUDS. Dir. David Cronenberg. North American Premiere. “Still grieving the loss of his wife, a technological entrepreneur (Vincent Cassel) finds what’s left of his world collapsing into a nightmare of sex, paranoia, and grief in David Cronenberg’s most personal film.”

THE WILD ROBOT. Dir. Chris Sanders. World Premiere. “Featuring the voices of Pedro Pascal, Catherine O’Hara, Lupita Nyong’o, Stephanie Hsu, and Bill Nighy, this DreamWorks Animation sci-fi adventure follows a robot designed to assist humans who finds herself stranded on an island populated exclusively by beasts.”

MIDNIGHT MADNESS

ELSE. Dir. Thibault Emin. World Premiere. “Thibault Emin’s mesmerizing debut feature intimately depicts a body-horror romance in the wake of a strange epidemic that causes the infected to melt into their surroundings.”

PLATFORMS

DANIELA FOREVER. Dir. Nacho Vigalondo. World Premiere. “In the latest from Nacho Vigalondo (COLOSSAL), Henry Golding (CRAZY RICH ASIANS) soulfully portrays a bereaved man who enrolls in a clinical trial for a drug that allows him to reunite with his lost lover (Beatrice Grannò) through lucid dreams.”

Still from DANIELA FOREVER. Courtesy of TIFF.

THE WOLVES ALWAYS COME AT NIGHT. Dir. Gabrielle Brady. World Premiere. “After a devastating storm wrought by climate change forces them from their home in the Mongolian countryside to the city, a young couple are forced to adapt to a new way of life in this breathtaking and heartbreaking hybrid film.”

SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

40 ACRES. Dir. R.T. Thorne. World Premiere. “In a post-apocalyptic future where food is scarce, the last descendants of a Black family of farmers who settled in Canada after the American Civil War must protect their homestead from a band of hungry cannibals.”

ALL OF YOU. Dir. William Bridges. World Premiere. “Brett Goldstein and Imogen Poots star in a stirring near-futuristic romance as best friends who harbor an unspoken love for one another even after a test matches one of them up with their supposed soulmate.”

CAN I GET A WITNESS?. Dir. Ann Marie Fleming. World Premiere. “Keira Jang, Joel Oulette, and Sandra Oh star in this introspective live-action and animated feature set in the near future when technology and travel are almost completely banned, and nobody is allowed to live past age 50.”

Still from CAN I GET A WITNESS?. Courtesy of TIFF.

SHELL. Dir. Max Minghella. World Premiere. “In this dark comedy and body horror about society’s obsession with youth and good looks, an actress (Elisabeth Moss) challenges a beauty firm CEO (Kate Hudson) over her company’s questionable science.”

THE ASSESSMENT. Dir. Fleur Fortuné. World Premiere. “Set in a future world destroyed by climate change, a couple must pass an assessment before they are allowed to have a child in this sci-fi thriller starring Alicia Vikander and Elizabeth Olsen.”

THE END. Dir. Joshua Oppenheimer. Canadian Premiere. “Joshua Oppenheimer (THE ACT OF KILLING) makes his fiction debut with this somber musical about the last remaining human family on earth, as they hide in an ornate bunker after environmental collapse has destroyed society. Starring Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, George MacKay, and Moses Ingram.”

Still from THE END. Courtesy of TIFF.

TIFF Docs

SPACE COWBOY. Dir. Marah Strauch, Bryce Leavitt. World Premiere. “Joe Jennings, a pioneer of skydiving cinematography, looks back on a lifetime of creating iconic moments in film and television, while he tries to pull off his most ambitious stunt yet, turning a dreamlike vision into reality.”

THE LAST OF THE SEA WOMEN. Dir. Sue Kim. World Premiere. “A spirited portrait of an endangered tradition and a galvanizing plea for better stewardship of our oceans, Sue Kim’s documentary dives deep into the culture of the haenyeo, the South Korean fisherwomen who have been harvesting seafood for their communities for centuries.”

Wavelengths

COLLECTIVE MONOLOGUE. Dir. Jessica Sarah Rinland. North American Premiere. “With COLLECTIVE MONOLOGUE, Wavelengths alumna Jessica Sarah Rinland pursues her ongoing concerns with the relationship between humans and the natural world in this intricate portrait of Buenos Aires zoos and animal shelters.”

• Preview of Science Films at TIFF
• The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Partners with TIFF
• Sloan Projects at TIFF

Science & Film: For those unfamiliar, how would you describe THE GARDEN?

Lara Palmqvist: In both its subject matter and structure, THE GARDEN is interested in connection: our connections with one another, our connections with the environment, and the connections between our choices today and the world of our future. The work of agricultural science and stewardship is at the forefront of THE GARDEN. The script also traces the relationship between social and environmental justice, particularly the ways in which class divides are being exacerbated by climate change. In THE GARDEN, an aging landscaper and a wealthy socialite each pursue protection from environmental crisis—for one, northern farmland for his family; for the other, an oasis of beauty in refutation of reality. Yet both are forced into an ultimate reckoning that individual paradise in our interconnected world is impossible, and that mutual care and collaboration are instead essential to well-being.

THE GARDEN is set in a near-future world facing food insecurity and drought, informed by real climate models. Alongside an elegiac awareness of all that we stand to lose if we fail to protect our singular planet, THE GARDEN offers an invitation to experience reverence and hope for how we might yet achieve a more equitable and ecologically sound future.

S&F: Can you tell me about the genesis of this project?

LP: We like to talk about the seed of an idea, but in the case of THE GARDEN, the script was inspired by literal seeds. For over a decade I’ve lived in the rural Midwest, surrounded by farmland and its related industries. My first job involved working on a strawberry farm, and in college I collaborated with local farmers to study the relationship between crop production and pollinators. From this work I gained a grasp of the incredible care, labor, and history that abide behind any given cultivar of food. I also learned how ­­– similar to animal extinctions we’re seeing across the globe due to climate change ­­– crop species are rapidly dying out. Altogether, only fifty plant species provide ninety-five percent of the world’s caloric intake, making our global food supply profoundly vulnerable.

As drought, plant disease, flooding, and other threats to farmland are increasing, we’re gaining evidence that monocrops, with their limited genetic pool, pose grave risks for food security. Because we don’t fully know what challenges climate change might present to agriculture, it’s urgent to protect crop diversity to the best of our abilities. Simply put, the fate of humanity is inextricable from the fate of our food. A central message of seed science—that diversity is our greatest strength—has always been meaningful to me. I also appreciate how seeds can be preserved, passed down, and carry history. The seeds of the Cherokee Black bean, for example, date back to the 1800s and were carried across the Trail of Tears.

A metaphorical link can be traced between the preservation and passing on of seeds with considerations of what climatic conditions future generations will inherit based on our current actions. From that point of connection, THE GARDEN started to take shape as a story that celebrates agricultural stewardship while also acknowledging food insecurity and cultivation challenges caused by climate change and environmental stress.

S&F: When I learned you had a B.A. in biology, it made total sense, given the subject matter. You also have an M.Th in religion in peace and conflict – how does you graduate area of study show up in the script? What would you say to those who suggest science and religion are at odds?

LP: Earning a degree in theology invited me to study some of humanity’s oldest and most influential narratives, including the Garden of Eden, versions of which exist across spiritual traditions. In my script, I sought to draw links between notions of an originating garden, paradise found and lost, and a world fallen into ruin—specifically through climate change—to consider anew what this story might teach us about responsibility to the natural world. Turning to theology for inspiration has also encouraged me to write toward large and enduring questions: what it means to be human, what matters in a life and in a death, and how to talk about and live among mystery.

Science, too, is steeped in questions and a sense of wonder. I’ve long seen a symbiosis between science, religion, and art. All three fields are devoted to helping us better understand ourselves and the world. In many cases, they share an aim to perceive and interpret experiences that exist beyond our normal bounds of understanding. While science and religion of course differ in many ways, the standard stark binaries drawn between the two fields feel too hasty and even harmful. In the findings of science, religion can encounter data-driven cause for reverence, while science in turn can benefit from religious practices. For example, in a time when advancements such as AI and deep-sea mining are developing at a rapid pace, scientists might complement the real-world implications of their research with questions of ethics guided by spiritual traditions. I’m always eager to support initiatives and collaborations that model how science and religion can inform one another with respect and openness.

S&F: Are there filmmakers or specific works that inspired you writing this script, or in general?

LP: In writing THE GARDEN I kept several filmmakers close to heart and mind. Watching—and, crucially, reading—the work of Barry Jenkins has been pivotal to my development as a screenwriter. In Jenkins’s lyrical writing, particularly in MOONLIGHT, I found permission to lean into the poetic tone that shapes so much of THE GARDEN. From Jenkins’s adaptation of The Underground Railroad I also found a model of how the environment can be approached as a character in its own right, which spoke to my script’s shared aim to allow nature to take a role equal to the human experience. Bong Joon-ho’s PARASITE was an essential influence upon THE GARDEN’s depiction of the societal chasms that can exist between abundance and need. THE GARDEN was also shaped in important ways by the work of filmmaker and artist Dario Robleto (a fellow Sloan grantee, for his forthcoming book), who draws radiant intersections between art and science with a level of depth, research, and poetics that I find profoundly inspiring.

S&F: Tell us about the scientific research you did in developing the script. Were there any ‘aha’ moments that stuck with you or heavily influenced the script?

LP: THE GARDEN offers a fact-based representation of climate science in relation to our food systems. My research for the script ranged from conversations with experts, to studying resources from research institutions, to reading reference books and scientific journals. I also drew on experiences such as a research trip to the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway, which is a seed bank intended to safeguard our global crop diversity in the event of environmental disaster.

THE GARDEN intentionally moves between representations of land stewards and scientific researchers, portraying their roles in a shared pursuit of food security. The script depicts the intricacies of seed breeding and also seeks to refute misperceptions related to CRISPR genome-editing technology. At the same time, the storyline doesn’t overlook downsides to agricultural biotechnology, including the use of the cytotoxin disruptor gene—a real gene that causes plants to create sterile seed with no benefit beyond protecting agricultural patents.

Learning about such “suicide seeds” was a moment that really shaped the narrative arc of the script. I became deeply interested in the lengths to which some seed companies go to protect their proprietary cultivars. As a result, THE GARDEN grew increasingly invested in ethical considerations of what it means to monetize crops that might hold the solution to easing global hunger, especially as climate change continues to impact food security.

S&F: In March you had the opportunity to hear excerpts of your work performed by professional actors for the first time, what was that like for you and did it impact your subsequent revisions to the script?

LP: Hearing excerpts of THE GARDEN performed at First Look meant everything to me. It was incredible to watch the script’s characters come to life through the brilliant talent and artistry of the actors. So much of a writer’s life is spent alone in a room, and on our own we can’t always be sure how a particular line will land, or how the cadences between two characters will resound. To have THE GARDEN portrayed in a fully embodied format, by such a remarkable cast, was thrilling and informative. It was equally meaningful to sense the audience’s response to the excerpt and to meet with some of them after the reading to hear their reactions. The entire community of filmmakers at the First Look Festival offered me inspiration and motivation as I continued revisions on the script, including edits I made related to perspectives afforded to me by the professional reading. I couldn’t be more grateful to have had such an impactful learning opportunity and experience.

S&F: What’s the latest with THE GARDEN today? Are you working on other projects?

LP: I’m so fortunate to be working through revisions on THE GARDEN with my two Sloan-appointed mentors: the filmmaker Adriane McCray and the scientist Dr. Andrew Reid Bell, who specializes in human-environment interactions and community responses to climate change. To my knowledge, the Sloan Foundation is the only institution that connects filmmakers with both industry and scientific mentors for continued development. This opportunity precisely aligns with my goals, and the support I’ve received has been instrumental and life-altering. In addition to THE GARDEN, I’m also at work on my next feature-length screenplay, a novel, and a collection of short stories, all of which incorporate factual science. As a writer committed to bridging conventional divides between science and art, joining the Sloan Foundation community feels like nothing short of a homecoming. I can never overstate the vastness of my gratitude.

♦

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Science & Film: As an artist, how did you become interested in science?

Kate Daudy: I was very bad at maths and science at school. I never really thought about it until I had this crisis of faith after I did a project with refugees, where I went around all these refugee camps and met people who seemed to be telling me that our life is what our thoughts make it. And so then I was like, well, if our lives are what our thoughts make it, that's pretty subjective. There must be some concrete fact that underpins all of this subjectivity—even if it's just the fact that we're all rearranged particles of carbon that have no meaning. So I went and spent some time at the CERN in Geneva, and spent some time with the theoretical physicists there, asking them a million questions. And then I went to the Millennium Seed Bank, and I was looking at plants and the beginning of nature and talking to scientists. And then this friend of mine said, oh, you should meet this very interesting physicist who's always asking questions like this, and you'll get along very well. So I met this physicist who is called Kostya Novoselov and we just got along like a house on fire. He was the most un-reassuring person I've ever come across because he opened my eyes to the fact that at the end of every imaginable question, there're just more questions. We'd have these terrible conversations where I'd say, two and two is four. And he'd be like, well... So everything just became even more complicated, and therefore, less complicated in a way because I felt relieved and freed by this lack of knowledge that I had.

So now I'm really passionate about science. I've spent a lot of time with Kostya working on different art and science projects, some of which have been made into films.

Kostya Novoselov and Kate Daudy, courtesy of the artist

S&F: So science didn't have the answers, it had more questions, but you fell in love with science. Can you speak a bit more about why you pursued the collaboration with Kostya?

KD: Every time we talk, we come up with ten ideas. We get really excited about them and start working on them immediately. It might be a project illustrating purity of intent because I think we are so interested in what we're doing it's like a pair of puppies in a basket kind of thing. I think it also really helps that Kostya is a very well qualified physicist and so science people are really happy to help him and then art people, obviously not all art people, but some art people, are quite interested in these projects that look at ideas and concepts in a new way. Like, writing on sheep or filling a tree with hundreds and hundreds of bells and chimes that we've made with this incredible guy from Sheffield... It brings a lot of joy, you know, these projects, so the moment that we've started on one, we're thinking about another one. It's a bit like a cheese rolling down a hill.

S&F: I've never heard that analogy!

KD: [laughs] Maybe it doesn't exist.

S&F: You mentioned writing on sheep. Can you tell me a bit about that project?

KD: We made four films with the sheep. The project in itself wasn't conceived of to be a film. The original idea was that we would write on sheep. The difference between random numbers and chaos was the beginning of the conversation that led to making this sheep film. We were sitting in Yorkshire at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and they had this beautiful flock of sheep that walks around amongst the sculptures, and the visitors all interact with the sheep and the sculptures. Kostya was explaining to me about this institute in America which creates one random number every two minutes. There’s a whole bunch of incredibly qualified PhD guys who create one random number every two minutes. And these random numbers are extremely difficult to make, because one random number can't follow on from another, because then it's not random. You can crack the code. And these numbers are used for banking and security and coding and inside your telephone. Random numbers are randomly super useful.

So, he's explaining this to me at great length. My eye is wandering over to the sheep, so I was like, what if we randomly wrote numbers on the sides of the sheep, and then the people wandering around this beautiful sculpture park randomly, would randomly see different arrangements of sheep who are roaming around, and that would create an awful lot of random numbers, and there's no control over what the sheep are going to do. So there would be no pattern that would be easy to crack.

So we asked the curator at the sculpture park, and she was very enthusiastic. Then we asked the shepherd. We got 250 sheep into their sheep pen, and I wrote on them, and then the Department of Physics from Manchester University came and looked at the sheep and said, Oh, yes, you've created more random numbers in a month with these sheep than there are atoms in this universe. And so we were just really thrilled. So then we were like, ah, we should make a film because otherwise nobody would ever see it. So then we made one film, which was the film that you can see of the sheep randomly roaming around. Although they were a bit organized in this film, they're less random than they were at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Then we made like a making of which explains the concept behind the other film. And then we got to work with the greatest cellist in the world who's this guy called Steven Isserlis, who adapted a piece of music from John Tavener called “The Lamb.” He came and played his beautiful, beautiful cello to the sheep with numbers on. And so we made this other film also with the sheep. And then we made another sheep film, illustrating Einstein's theory of unification in Segovia that was commissioned by the Spanish government and by the Hay Festival, which shows that two groups of people with an opposing view can get along. We did an entire takeover of the city of Segovia for a day and drove these nearly 500 sheep across the plains of Castile into Segovia. And then the shepherd got them to go round and round in a circle. It was just so beautiful. So these are sheep science films.

S&F: That's a new genre. [laughs] How important is it to you for people to understand the process and how you got to the ultimate performance or action is that you're documenting in the film?

KD: I think it's really important because otherwise it's not so interesting. For me, you know, personally, I see this film, and I think, lots of sheep with numbers on. But if you have the story of why and how it was made, it's super interesting. I think that art can be a very good conduit for ideas and concepts that people might not give much thought to. But if they do, if they take the time to think about it, it's sort of joyful. I think anything more that we can understand about our universe, and the world around us, and how things work and how other people think and see things is something that is a positive contribution to our understanding of one another, which is, I think, one of the functions of art.

S&F: What's been inspiring to you and Kostya recently?

KD: As a result of those sheep we made a completely surrealistic film, where we unloaded a load of videos from our phone and numbered them, then we pulled out numbers from the sheep, and lined them up with the numbers of the videos that we'd pulled off our phone. And then we coded them with a sound and had an amazing opera singer sing according to the numbers on the sheep and the images on the film. That was quite an interesting film just illustrating a point about randomness.

Now we're making our next film. We've found a guy in Nottingham who has a weightless vacuum box. So inside this box, you can recreate the conditions of outer space. We're putting inside a spoonful of honey, and then we're going to put microphones in and read poems to the glob of honey, and film the shapes that the honey forms according to each poem, and then each poem will be represented by this moving sphere of honey sort of changing form. That we're going to show at the Lorca Center in Grenada. And we're going to read Lorca poems, and we're getting Lorca's niece to come and read the poems to the honey. And it's just so magic, it's just completely great, because I would never know about this weightless vacuum box, Kostya, I'm not sure he was a big fan of Lorca before we all started on this, and together we're doing this really wonderful science and art film project. One of the cinematographers is this guy called Gautier Deblonde who's quite a distinguished cinematographer.

I kind of feel like why I love being an artist is just meeting interesting people, meeting you. I'm just here in my little rooms, and now I'm learning about the world. It's so exciting. And that's one of the things that's wonderful about cinema and about film. You can be literally just sitting in your little room. Trying to make films, as we have been doing, has taught me a lot about the medium of cinema, and what a responsibility the film director has as an individual, and also what a privilege it is to be able to work in this medium because it's so powerful.

♦

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Sloan Science & Film spoke with Sunny’s Executive Producer and showrunner Katie Robbins about connection, technology, and the ever-evolving pas de deux between them.

Science & Film: What initially drew you to this project?

Katie Robbins: The novel The Dark Manual by Colin O'Sullivan was sent to me back in 2018. It was an unusual thing for me to have been sent because it was in the sci-fi realm. While I am a science fiction fan, it’s not a genre that I'd ever written before, so I was surprised. First, Colin [O’Sullivan] is a beautiful writer. I was captivated by his writing, and by this kernel within the story about a woman living as an expat in Japan – which is a country I adore – who experiences the worst possible trauma. I have always been drawn to stories about how people cope in the face of trauma and tragedy. What comes afterward? What keeps us going? If during the worst time of someone’s life, her instinct is to turn inward and like keep people at bay, what would it take to draw her back out? That is what interested me about the home bot. I’d been wanting to explore themes of female friendship, loneliness and connection so it felt like an unusual way to do that.

S&F: Tell me more about your relationship to the source material. Are there other things you chose to strip away or add?

KR: In the novel, the home bot is male and an antagonist throughout. I changed the robot to being a female robot and adjusted the arc of her relationship [with Suzie] as a means to play with the themes I’d been wanting to explore. We also moved to the show to Kyoto. I loved the idea of juxtaposition. A lot of science fiction storytelling set in Japan takes place in Tokyo, which makes complete sense because it’s so cutting edge in so many ways. Then there’s Kyoto, this extraordinarily cinematic, historical city full of tiny streets lined with machiya townhouses. The tension between the old and the new in Kyoto was something I was really excited about playing with in the show.

I also created an arc that would provide the show with a mystery spine. Suzie receives Sunny in the pilot, not knowing that her husband even worked in robotics. This news to her, so in addition to creating a sense of mystery it gets to some of the themes that I was interested in exploring. We are ultimately so alone in our own bodies and in our minds, and you can feel like you really know somebody but how much can you ever really know the people that you're surrounded by? This key mysterious element within a relationship felt like a juicy way to talk about some of these themes.

S&F: To your point about juxtaposition, the retro, mid-century aspects of the world of the show really sing. I mean that figuratively, but I thank you and the show for introducing me to Mari Atsumi, the 1960s singer whose “Sukiyo Aishite” serves as SUNNY’s theme song.That time period held such a different view of the future. Even in the five years since you began working with this story, has your view on the technological process of the show relative to our own changed?

KR: It's so fascinating. When I started writing the pilot in 2019, I did a research trip to Japan where I got to visit some robotics labs so I had some sense of what was being explored by scientists, roboticists, and engineers. I also worked with an AI consultant, Nell Watson. We’d discuss how I could solve a problem, and she’d share a concept – for instance, one that comes up later in the series so I won’t spoil it – that I’d think of it as something so far in the future but she’d say, ‘No, no, no, this is coming.’ Later, we were in the process of filming the show in Japan when ChatGPT came out. All of a sudden, all of these things that Nell had been telling me were on the verge were suddenly real. Like you, I'm a writer so this stuff is scary. This is happening now.

Much like within the show, we’re always looking at the shiny toy that is AI and all of the promises that it offers, but there’s also a dirty underside there. We have Sunny, this character who goes back and forth between being great comfort and companion to Suzie, yet in the next scene she can suddenly be quite nefarious and potentially murderous. That was always like baked in, questioning the costs and benefit analysis of AI.

S&F: The second episode is called “Don't Blame the Machine”. There’s also this rumor within the show about a guide which enables humans to hack robots into doing harmful things their programming would otherwise prohibit. This made me think, do you see SUNNY’S central conflict as man vs. machine or man vs. self?

KR: The latter, definitely. What’s been so interesting in writing and researching this show is I've started to see connections between robotics and art. Everything human-made has the capacity to be beautiful and do good, because it is a reflection of us. At the same time, everything human-made has the capacity to cause great harm. In that way, artificial intelligence is like any technology. I think what makes it terrifying is that it's so powerful and stokes a fear of it surpassing us. It’s comparable in a lot of ways to nuclear energy. There was this idea it was going to be a beautiful clean source of energy and now we know it can cause great harm in purposeful ways, and it can cause great harm in not-so-purposeful ways. It’s Pandora’s box, but I think that we are at a turning point with AI. We are at a precipice where, as a society, we have to make decisions about how we're going to use this. I don’t think it’s going away, so it does all come back to us. This technology doesn't exist without our hands on it, and so we have to figure out how we're going to use our hands.

S&F: There’s a scene where Masa attempts to help Suzie as she’s struggling with a ramen vending machine, something common to him but unusual to her. Do you think our relationship to technology has much to do with our culture? Did your research illuminate many differences between Japanese culture and American culture with respect to technology?

KR: Yes, that is certainly true. I think within the Western canon, AI and technology are generally often viewed with a degree of skepticism. It’s the monster that enters our lives. That exists within Japanese works as well, but I’ve encountered a lot of Japanese literature around robotics with a more benevolent attitude. This is just me sort of surmising, but I think within Japanese culture there’s an idea that a thing can be viewed as a piece of the person who has made it. There is a respect for objects because there is a respect for the people who made them, and for handicraft itself. That extends to robotics and to technology in a way.

This is adjacent to what you're saying, but it feels like connection has so much to do with the great allure of technology, particularly communication technology. Within our show, Suzie has moved to Japan, but doesn't have the ability to speak the language, so she uses this like translation device throughout the show. That’s a great thing for us because it meant that we could put Suzie in scenes with any character we wanted and they could share a common language and it's great for her as a character. It allows her to enter a country where she doesn't speak the language, meet somebody, fall in love and have the interaction she needs to make it through the world. On some levels, that brings her and other characters together but it also keeps her at arm's length. What would it be like to have most of your interactions be filtered through an earpiece, and never really be hearing the person you're speaking to? There’s a distancing effect. I moved to Los Angeles years ago but never learned how to get around because I could use Google Maps. It’s a similar thing that is so great but also keeps us from fully experiencing the place that we are. There can be a unifying ability [to technology] among cultures but I think it also inhibits us from fully immersing in other places when we go to them as well.

S&F: Beautifully said. Speaking of, SUNNY’s visual world is quite captivating and immersive. In building the world of the show, were there works or artists you drew inspiration from or to whom you wanted to pay homage?

KR: Yes. Lucy Tcherniak, our producing director who came on very early in the process, drew a lot from mid-century, colorful noirs like Seijun Suzuki’s TOKYO DRIFTER. That was a key visual touchpoint she brought in and I fell in love with, so I began to incorporate it into my writing. We had an amazing collaboration. She's a genius.

S&F: Conversely, were there touchpoints you wanted to avoid in how themes around technology have been explored in the past?

KR: I am not so embedded in science fiction, so I wasn't actively trying to steer clear of things. Because the genre is not baked into my bones as a writer, I let myself be pretty free. It was a funny thing, writing in a country that is not my country and writing in a genre that's not necessarily my genre, yet this feels like one of the most personal things I've ever written. It was unexpected.

♦

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I, ORIGINS follows Michael Pitt as Ph.D. student Ian Gray, a molecular biologist whose fascination with the evolution of the eye leads him down a path of profound existential inquiry. Following the film’s Sundance premiere, Science and Film spoke with Jonathan A. King, a professor of molecular biology at MIT and a lecturer at the 2009 Evolution of the Vertebrate Eye Symposium, about some of the issues raised by I ORIGINS and whether the eye is, in fact, “a window onto the soul.”

The interview has been re-published below in its entirety.

Sloan Science and Film: Where does your interest in the eye stem from?

Jonathan King: I am a protein bio-chemist. I study the folding of proteins and the misfolding and aggregation of proteins in many of the chronic diseases that ravage the population. In Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, what happens is that proteins, instead of folding up and keeping to their compact conformation, unfold and stick together and form these large aggregates. At some point, I was myself moving on, into my early 70s, and thought I ought to turn my research to these pathologies, which are, on the one hand, found in the aging population, and on the other hand, involve protein unfolding, which my lab knows how to study. One of the prevalent protein disposition diseases in humans is cataracts. It’s the major cause of blindness in the world. It’s a very serious public health burden. We thought if we could understand how these proteins aggregate and stick together in the lens of the eye, maybe we can come up with a preventive therapy, like an eye drop, that slows down the development of a cataract. And once you start studying an eye disease, you have to become knowledgeable about the eye. I was a biologist by training with a Ph.D. in genetics. I’ve always been interested, as many biologists are, in evolution and I was impressed by Darwin’s contributions. So it all came together.

Still from I, ORIGINS. Courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures.

SSF: I Origins brings up the debate about whether theories of evolution can accommodate for the “irreducible complexity” of the eye. What is the current scientific thinking on this?

JK: Among biologists, this question has faded away as we’ve come to understand the extraordinary capacity of natural selection over time, over hundreds of millions of years to invent and develop new proteins, new organelles, new organs. And we've now learned more about the eye’s origins. For example, Cahill’s film apparently describes the Pax-6 gene, which is a control circuit we now know is found broadly in many, many different organisms that are involved in turning on the genes that you need for vision.

I study the crystallins of the eye lens, which are essential for the transparency of the lens, permitting light to pass through and reach the retina. It turns out you can find ancestors of this protein in sea squirts. But sea squirts don’t have eyes; they have an eye spot. And it may be that the origin of this protein has to do with the fact that it’s resistant to ultraviolet light; because if you’re going to be transparent, you’re going to be constantly bathed in ultraviolet light, which damages proteins. So we think that the eye lens proteins evolved before there was an eye to have stability and resistance from damage to ultraviolet light.

This trait was then recruited at the point when vertebrates were evolving and there was selection for acute vision to catch prey, so having a lens that could focus light was very useful. The proteins were already there; it’s just some of the parts pre-evolved for different reasons. That happens all the time in biology, where something has evolved under selective pressure and then a new stress emerges and, low and behold, it turns out you have the right part for reasons that you couldn’t have predicted beforehand.

And then there are advances in genomics where you can see the ancestral genes for many other proteins that are found in the eye. Some of the complexity is in the wiring from the retina to the brain. But brains, or concentrations of neural tissue, are found in very very primitive animals like flat worms, so you can see as the organism gets more advanced, the complexity of the wiring gets more and more complicated and you have more capacity for more and more connections from the retina. It doesn’t mean you can actually see the path to the wiring from a primary retina, but it doesn’t seem that surprising.

The Harvard paleontologist, Farish Jenkins, Jr., who died recently, discovered the first walking fish. When they actually found the fossil, even a lay person could see that there was something different about its bone structure. For example, the neck had evolved, so the animal moved its neck in a way that a fish doesn’t have to do, but if you’re on land, you have to. And all of a sudden, the hypothesis that these fish gave rise to the first terrestrial four-legged animals becomes much more concrete, because you can see these intermediate stages. But with the vertebrate eye, it’s soft tissue. So we don’t have bones preserved that you do in the joints. It’s a slower, longer process to see what were the actual steps in the evolution of a high resolution vertebrate eye.

SSF: In the film, the molecular biologists conduct an experiment where they create a worm that evolves a primitive kind of eye. Is this feasible?

JK: The early steps in the formation of the eye, which is the pinching off from the ectoderm, the outer layer of cells, to have something called an eye placode, or a ball of cells, sets the stage for the morphology of the eye. I can easily imagine if you activated the right genes you could move in that direction.

SSF: The script of I Origins features discussion of the “eye being a window to the soul.” I realize this is a cliché and it’s not scientific, but I wonder if this idea has any resonance for you?

JK: What does have resonance is that I used to work in professional development for science teachers and if you look at a high school class, and you get to the point where they’re discussing the senses, there’s no doubt that among a broad range of young people, the eyes and vision are what engages them. Everyone is more aware of the importance of vision than, say, touch or smell. They’re much more interested in eyes than ears. I believe that it comes from the fact that in human facial recognition and the relationships between individuals, the eyes play a much larger role—recognition, affection, who’s a friend, who’s a stranger. That’s not the same as the eye being the window into the soul. But eyes are a dominant feature of the human face. And humans are predominantly social. They don’t recognize each other by looking at the ears or the knees. They recognize each other by looking at the face.

♦

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Later that spring, PBS aired the premiere of David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg’s NOVA documentary SECRETS IN YOUR DATA on May 15. Hosted by Dr. Alok Patel, the one-hour piece focused on the current prevalence of inadvertently sharing personal data online, and how to protect one’s privacy in the face of it.

Read more about these projects and find out where to stream them below.

THE CANCER DETECTIVES: THE TRAILBLAZERS WHO LANDED THE FIRST BLOW AGAINST CANCER. Dir. Amanda Pollak, Gene Tempest. The story of how the life-saving cervical cancer test became an ordinary part of women’s lives is as unusual and remarkable as the coalition of people who ultimately made it possible: a Greek immigrant, Dr. George Papanicolaou; his intrepid wife, Mary; Japanese-born artist Hashime Murayama; Dr. Helen Dickens, an African American OBGYN in Philadelphia; and an entirely new class of female scientists known as cyto-screeners. But the test was just the beginning. Once the test proved effective, the campaign to make pap smears available to millions of women required nothing short of a total national mobilization. THE CANCER DETECTIVES tells the untold story of the first-ever war on cancer and the people who fought tirelessly to save women from what was once the number one cancer killer of women. Available to stream on the American Experience website and YouTube.

POISONED GROUND: THE TRAGEDY AT LOVE CANAL. Dir. Jamila Ephron. The dramatic and inspiring story of the ordinary women who fought against overwhelming odds for the health and safety of their families. In the late 1970s, residents of Love Canal, a working-class neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, discovered that their homes, schools and playgrounds were built on top of a former chemical waste dump, which was now leaking toxic substances and wreaking havoc on their health. Through interviews with many of the extraordinary housewives turned activists, the film shows how they effectively challenged those in power, forced America to reckon with the human cost of unregulated industry, and created a grassroots movement that galvanized the landmark Superfund Bill. Available to stream on the American Experience website and YouTube.

SECRETS IN YOUR DATA. Dir. David Alvarado, Jason Sussberg. Whether you’re on social media or surfing the web, you’re probably sharing more personal data than you realize. That can pose a risk to your privacy – even your safety. But at the same time, big datasets could lead to huge advances in fields like medicine. Host Alok Patel leads a quest to understand what happens to all the data we’re shedding and explores the latest efforts to maximize benefits – without compromising personal privacy. Available to watch on the NOVA website and YouTube.

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• New Sloan Winners at NYU and Athena Film Festival

In 1969, at the height of the Cold War and the Space Race, both the US and the Soviet Union had already launched their first satellites, sent animals, and even humans into orbit. The primary goal for both countries was to be the first to land a crewed lunar vessel on the Moon and then return it to Earth. The senior Soviet rocket engineer, Sergei Korolev, dreamed of stations and crewed flights to Mars and Venus and the USSR planned to establish a lunar base for their highly anticipated launch, while NASA’s expenditure on the Apollo 11 mission reached approximately 355 million dollars. The stakes were incredibly high, and whoever succeeded first would make history.

Over the past decades, the mission has inspired dozens of documentary and fiction films and series, proving that the Moon landing continues to captivate our minds. Films such as APOLLO 11: FIRST STEPS EDITION (2019), which uses archival 70mm footage, or FIRST MAN (2018), a dramatic biopic about Armstrong, mostly focus on the success of the NASA mission against all odds. Promotions for these movies have a similar look: an astronaut staring into endless space, with the surface of the Moon reflected in his round, shiny helmet. This heroic narrative is similar to the one that media was pushing at the time of the 1969 launch, because public opinion was mixed.

From left to right: Key art for APOLLO 11 (2019), courtesy of Neon. Key art for ARMSTRONG (2019), courtesy of Gravitas Ventures. Key art for FIRST MAN (2018), courtesy of Universal Pictures.

At the time of the launch of Apollo 11, NASA had been in existence for only nine years, and much of the US public’s attention was focused on the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. To harness public support and attention for Apollo 11 as a large-scale, technologically sophisticated program that would bolster American pride, prestige, and help win the Cold War, NASA turned to the media.

The live broadcasting of the Moon landing made it a remarkable, relatable event. On television, it was accessible to almost everyone on Earth. The broadcast was revolutionary because, unlike the Soviet space programs, it informed the public of the rocket launch prior to the actual launch. NASA’s public relations team continuously shared with reporters and journalists information about the technology involved in the launch, which ensured the accuracy of the press.

In contrast to the films mentioned above that depict the heroic nature of the Apollo mission, others question the transparency of NASA’s communication. OPERATION AVALANCHE (2016) is a mockumentary co-written, directed, and produced by Matt Johnson (BLACKBERRY), where two undercover CIA agents infiltrate NASA and shoot footage of a fake moon landing after learning that the US is losing the space race to the Soviets.

Media has been used to depict the moon landing in various ways, through positive and more skeptical lenses. Now, a new romantic comedy-drama FLY ME TO THE MOON is coming out on July 11 starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum. Reconsidering the first Moon landing and its unique historical context the film, like OPERATION AVALANCHE, centers the story around the creators of the fake landing, this time a marketing team. This latest installment in the genre of Moon landing films promises to be a great and humorous way to celebrate the upcoming anniversary.

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Hustwit has made a number of documentaries about design, his most recent being RAMS (2018), about Dieter Rams. Ahead of the release of ENO, I spoke with him about the film’s generative approach, its dizzying possibilities, and how these affected the documentary filmmaking process.

First thing’s first: do you have a favorite Brian Eno track?

[laughs] There are a lot that I like, but I can’t say that I have a favorite. I like a lot of the stuff on ANOTHER GREEN WORLD. Obviously the first three solo records are amazing and still hold up. I like a lot of the ambient stuff too. And I love some of what Brian’s been doing recently, like the collaboration with Fred again... And I love all the songs that he made for the soundtrack of my previous film, RAMS. He's insanely prolific. He's in the studio every day making music.

When did you decide upon a generative approach for the movie?

From the get-go—before shooting, before I'd even approached Brian about it. Five years ago, I was questioning why films have to be the same every time. Mostly out of very selfish reasons, because I was going on screening tours for RAMS in 40 or 50 cities, and I couldn't watch the film anymore because I'd already spent years working on it and hundreds of hours just watching it over and over again. My background was in music before I got involved in film, and music doesn't have that problem because musicians, even if they're having to play their same hit song every single night, it's still different every single night. I had some problems with film being so static and was trying to think of a way that film could be more performative.

And we had the technology. When everything went digital, both filmmaking and exhibition, this constraint of a film having to be the same every time or having to be a fixed piece of art was gone. So I reached out to my friend Brendan Dawes, this amazing digital artist and creator who I'd known for 15 years. And he was game to try [a generative film]. First, we started experimenting using all the raw footage from RAMS, including Brian's music. We both realized that Brian would be the perfect subject for a generative documentary and ended up showing Brian a demo using the RAMS footage. He was excited to get involved. I don't think he was excited about having a documentary about himself, but I think he was excited about the possibilities around the generative film system.

Still from ENO

So you shot the film, and then did you use custom generative software or tailor a preexisting program?

Oh it's a custom piece of software that Brendan and I have spent almost five years developing. It's a proprietary thing. We recently launched a software startup called Anamorph, which is going to be pushing that software and the capabilities, and collaborating with other filmmakers, studios, and streamers to innovate this idea forward. It’s a bespoke system that we developed to do a very specific thing, which was create this film and have it be different every time, but still have an arc to it and be an engaging documentary watching experience.

I wasn't trying to make an experimental mash-up of random Eno footage. We did do something like that at the Venice Biennale last October, where we took all the rules off the generative software and just chucked all the footage and all Brian's music into it and let it make a film that went on for a week. It was a 168-hour-long film. But I wanted ENO the film to be just like any other documentary that I've made, just different every time. We had incredible documentary editors who were challenged to think, well, how do I create a story arc here if I don't know if the scene I'm editing is going to appear in the film, and if it does appear, what's going to be before or after it?

What’s an example of a rule that the generative software follows to assemble the scenes?

A lot of it is about the type of footage that it is, whether it's an archival music performance or it's in talking about creativity, or it's a big idea that has nothing to do with music, and establishing a rhythm of those types of scenes. We expect there to be a rhythm of information and story pieces in a documentary. And we give it a three-act structure, even though you maybe don't realize that when you're watching it—it has some thematic grouping that's happening throughout. One simple rule is that there are a dozen different Oblique Strategies cards that may come up in the film, and if one does come up, then that unlocks certain scenes or pivots the film's direction for a little while.

In the version I watched, we see Laurie Anderson draw an Oblique Strategies card and read it out: “Gardening, not architecture.”

Yeah. So, that unlocks certain scenes that you wouldn’t be able to see if David Byrne had pulled a card that said: “Take a break.” But I try not to demystify the software part of this, because in some ways, I just want the focus to be on the story and what you're learning about Brian, and for you to sit back and relax and watch it. Pay no attention to the software behind the curtain.

There’s this intriguing notion of the unpredictable starting points that our creativity can have. In a clip Eno talks about tie-dye and the idea that doing something “badly” can be creatively interesting. That comes right after he talks about his musical inspirations like Little Richard.

Yeah, that's a great example of what I'm talking about. I think the fact that it's all about one person also lends itself to this approach. You can learn about him and Bowie at the 20-minute mark or at the 60-minute mark, and in some ways, it doesn't really matter. By the end of the film, you'll have gotten that information and put together this composite portrait of Brian in your head.

What I'm super interested in is how do you take that approach and do a fiction film, a narrative story? We can also adapt this approach to existing films. How many alternate takes and cutting-room floor stuff happens with any new film now? What if there's a way to use all of that material in a generative platform? I want to see the generative MULHOLLAND DRIVE, because that film kind of plays like a generative film anyway.

Gary Hustwit, photo by Ebru Yildiz

Eno’s Oblique Strategies can function as a way of releasing unconscious connections. The strategy “Honor thy error as a hidden intention” feels like another way of saying “follow your Freudian slips.”

Yeah, definitely. I think part of that unconsciousness is a little bit about our brains making connections that aren't necessarily there and bringing out things in the footage, or in this case, bringing out things in Brian and his thinking. We're doing that as the audience—I'm not doing that as the creator of the film. It is a lot about how we want to try to find patterns and solve puzzles and figure out what the connection is between this scene and the next scene.

What version of the movie did Eno watch?

Brian saw the Sundance premiere version, and then he saw the London premiere. And I would send him pieces of things to watch during the making of the film. So he’s seen two very different iterations, and he remarked on it in the conversation after the U.K. premiere at the Barbican Centre. He was like, “That version was very wordy and poppy.” It was less music and more of the intellectual conversation. And sometimes you get much more music and less talking. Both times he saw Laurie Anderson. In the Sundance generation, it was all Laurie and then Byrne came in later, and there's even someone else that we're getting ready to film.

Knowing that you were going to use this approach, did that affect how you did interviews or gathered material?

I don't think it did. Other than the fact that I talked to Brian about generative filmmaking because I knew it would be interesting to hear his ideas about using generative software in this process, I just approached it like any other film that I make. I wanted to focus on Brian's ideas about creativity and how he enables it in other artists. I figured that if we just got great stuff, it would work.

So the individual sequences that go into the algorithm are edited beforehand?

Some are edited and some are being created on the fly, so it's a combination of the two. How long should the scene be? Can you have a 10-minute scene in this film or several 10-minute scenes back-to-back? Is that too long? Again, there's a rhythm. For the Film Forum run, I'm making dozens of different versions. Or I can create it live in the theater in real-time.

How would you distinguish between generative software and what AI does?

There are so many different flavors of generative and AI software. You can have a generative software program that is run by an algorithm programmed by humans, or artists in this case. Or you can have something where the decision-making is based on a model that is trained on other people's data that's found on the web or whatever, ChatGPT, for instance. Both those things are generative. One is using actual intelligence to program the algorithm, and one is using artificial intelligence to make those choices. So in our case, we programmed the algorithm with our knowledge as filmmakers of how to tell documentary stories. We didn't train the system by feeding it 10,000 documentaries and letting it figure it out.

And the data set of ENO is kind of a closed system. We're using this software that we created on our own material. We're not using other people's footage here. It's all our stuff from Brian's archive or things we shot or things we've licensed or whatever. So it is different from something like a large language model or a text-to-video generator. These other things have amazing potential but also have real ethical questions. It’s always what your motivations are and the way you're using the technology. It's not “all technology is bad.” In this case, we were trying to make a capability that didn't exist before. It wasn't about making films quicker or easier or cutting a bunch of people out of the process by using technology.

How do you know when the movie’s done?

I don't know. I'm sure at some point I'll want to stop, but there's still so much footage: so much of Brian’s archive, new things coming out from European television archives or whatever, people approaching us with new material too. And we can also continue doing new filming. Brian's involved in a lot of interesting projects now with this Hard Art group that he co-founded in England. So we'll see. It’s part of the experiment. Does it need to be finished?

♦

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As for feature films, look no further than acclaimed writer/director Michael Almereyda’s TESLA, which received development support in 2016 through the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s partnership with SFFILM, and was awarded the $20,000 Sloan Feature Film Prize by a jury at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Before its world premiere, Science & Film’s Sonia Epstein sat down with Almereyda at Sundance to discuss his approach to the character and film. The interview has been republished below in its entirety.

Science & Film: Tesla was a famously eclectic character–he supposedly had a pigeon who he loved, and so on. What did you tell Ethan Hawke about Tesla when you first discussed the film?

Michael Almereyda: I think he read some books actually. He’s got initiative. Tesla is sort of iconic and mysterious. The pigeon part of his life is the later part of his life—the film tracks about 15 years pre-pigeon. So, no pigeons were harmed in this movie, no pigeons were even in this movie. There’s a novel you might be familiar with that involves Tesla in later life with his pigeons, and Tesla wrote about his love of pigeons. But I wanted to focus on a different part of his life that was very specific and very eventful, even without that [romance].

S&F: How did you decide what part of his life you wanted to focus the film on?

MA: I belatedly looked at Tesla’s obituary in The New York Times. It’s fascinating to do that because it shows you how perceptions evolve, and how folklore and mythology evolve. When he died, he wasn’t a front-page figure. He was page 19. There was a photograph of a gaunt old man, and it was extensive, but it was: Nikola Tesla, prolific inventor, dies. It acknowledged what is abidingly true, which is that most of his great work was done in an astonishingly compressed amount of time: 15-20 years after he arrived in New York. After that, there was a lot of promise, possibility, press conferences, announcements, and…wishful thinking. The way that the wishful thinking has been interpreted is either defeated vision or insanity—it’s open to question.

I wanted to deal with his accomplishments more than wishful thinking. He had a flood of activity for about 20 years, and it really is bridged by the turn of the century. By 1901 and 1902 he had a financial disaster that he never recovered from. I think it was also an emotional and psychological disaster. There are different versions of the script, I’ve been writing the script over time. I didn’t want to try and get prosthetics, or cast an old man, and… someone else can make the pigeon movie, let’s put it that way! That’s yet to be done, and I look forward to seeing it, but I didn’t want to direct that movie [laughs]. David Lynch had a Tesla project, lots of people had Tesla projects. Jim Jarmusch wanted Tilda Swinton to play Tesla. I got lucky with my TESLA, but I’m ready for others.

S&F: Visualizing the process of invention, what can be such an internal process, is difficult. How did you approach this in the film?

MA: Yeah. The movie doesn’t show him inventing things, pretty much. But there’s one movie I like about Hannah Arendt [Margarethe von Trotta’s HANNAH ARENDT] where it just shows her lying down, smoking a lot. That shows her thinking, and the power of her philosophical brain, expressed through plumes of cigarette smoke. And Ethan liked the idea of smoking—I later had to admit that Tesla didn’t smoke past a certain point—but that was one way I indulged him, and I think it’s fine. He smokes. It’s hard to embody thought, or express thought, and Ethan does a great job. But it’s more about attitude, the scenes aren’t about inventing, it is more about the consequences of inventing and how other figures and forces interact with the inventions. So the film is channeled through the voice, the viewpoint, of Anne Morgan. She bridges her father, who is a financial titan who backed Edison at first and also gave money to Tesla, and also was shaping the US economy in ways that remain indelible. Anne Morgan’s relationship with Tesla is not something I invented, but I did perhaps underline it a lot, and that was a way of bringing my understanding to the surface.

S&F: Is there anything that you read, or anyone that you talked to that helped you understand Tesla’s scientific contributions?

MA: I read this wonderful book that came out in 2015 called The Truth About Tesla, and it absorbed and acknowledged a lot of great writing about Tesla, but also delved deeper into looking at the patent laws, and at the history through the legal maneuvers that different forces took—different inventors and the people who backed them. It dissolved some of the hero-worship of Tesla, while strengthening my respect for him in other ways. It also clarifies a lot of the science that I’m not necessarily agile in understanding. It’s a great book, and I would recommend that book to anyone who really cares about Tesla because it’s not as well known. It’s beautifully illustrated, it’s also organized and expressed in a language that is refined. The first book I read as a teenager that started my fascination is called Prodigal Genius, so that fires you up in a different way [laughs]. And after a while that kind of thinking feels inadequate, it feels thin and superficial and like a comic book.

I think Tesla is one of those figures we can acknowledge as a genius. As much as that word gets devalued, I think he qualifies, and it would be foolish to try to thin that vocabulary out. But I was more interested over time in what was human about him, rather than what was superhuman. I hope this movie combines those appreciations.

S&F: Just from what I know about Tesla coils and electricity, but also the Wardenclyffe Tower, which was this amazing idea about free energy for all...

MA: This book [The Truth About Tesla] is great at recognizing that “free energy” was not an expression that Tesla came up with. He never described it as free energy. And part of my fascination came from a great comic book artist, a guy who within his own framework is called a genius, named Alex Toth. He’s a visual storyteller that I’ll always be learning from, and anyone who cares about narrative through pictures: he’s a brilliant man. But he was illustrating really stupid stories. Alex befriended me when I was a teenager and I would go over to his house and chain smoke—I guess that’s another reason I let Ethan smoke [laughs]—and he would talk about Nikola Tesla. That’s how I learned about Tesla, through Alex Toth. Toth was convinced, as many people are to this day, that Tesla’s visionary, utopian idea of free energy was thwarted by J.P. Morgan. This is a distortion. This is not what my movie will tell you. My movie, I hope, acknowledges ambiguities. Tesla was someone who lived in luxury hotels, had tailor-made clothes, ate at the supremely most expensive restaurants, and if he was really interested in this utopian ideal of free energy for all, he didn’t express it in ways that are trackable.

He wanted to aid humanity. He had high-minded ideals, but he wasn’t very good at getting his hands dirty with people. He literally was afraid of touching people. In the obituary in The New York Times, it acknowledged that in his life in the hotel he demanded that no one get closer than three feet to him.
His ability to actualize ideas is so tantalizing because we want to imagine that his ideas about energy could be exemplary and fulfilled. But the book I mentioned cites that most scientists who are truly aware of his ideas and can understand them, or have tested or tried to duplicate them, would testify that, unfortunately, he was wrong. He was right about so many things, and we are living in the world that he helped invent. We are still living within a technological framework that he shaped, that he was an indispensable factor in. But he tried to overreach, his ideas spilled past that, into a realm that can be qualified as mysticism more than science.

S&F: Why do you think it’s taken a relatively long time for a feature about Tesla to be made?

MA: It’s not hard to understand it from a cruel or a crass perspective: Tesla didn’t have a single romantic relationship that’s acknowledged. Most movies hang themselves on that framework. So I kind of cheated by implying the possibility, because he did have a flirtation with Anne Morgan, I didn’t make that up. That’s part of the essence of who he is, and that’s part of what is sobering and sad about his story. Because I think that he didn’t take that risk. There was something within himself that he didn’t acknowledge. And that’s not scientific, that’s on a human level–he was cut off. I cite Henry James as an example of someone who wrote about that at length, and piercingly. There’s this music from Jane Campion’s movie, THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, which I borrowed and weaved in as a reference to that. So that’s something you can look forward to.

S&F: It’s interesting you say that about the romance, because there was a film student who got a Sloan grant to make a short film about Tesla, and even in ten minutes it has a romance which just underscores your point.

MA: They invented a romance?

S&F: Yeah.

MA: With a pigeon?

S&F: I do think human-nonhuman companionship is an interesting way of exploring love and attachment…

MA: All the big biopics that we know about, including A BEAUTIFUL MIND, they hang it on a relationship–someone to get them out of their head. Tesla didn’t get out of his head very much or very well. His head was all-encompassing, but I think it kind of imploded. The real truth, the real man: it’s kind of terrifying.

♦

Ethan Hawke and Michael Almereyda at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Feature Film Prize Reception at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. © 2020 Sundance Institute, photo by Jovelle Tamayo.

TESLA stars Ethan Hawke, Kyle MacLachlan, Eve Hewson, Jim Gaffigan, Hannah Gross, and Josh Hamilton. The film is written and directed by Michael Almereyda, produced by Almereyda, Uri Singer, Christa Campbell, Isen Robbins, Lati Grobman, and Per Melita, edited by Kathryn J. Schubert, and features music composed by John Paesano. Michael Almereyda’s other films include MARJORIE PRIME, EXPERIMENTER, NADJA, HAMLET, CYMBELINE, and many more.

SHORT FILMS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE TO STREAM

Eunice Newton Foote – Born July 17, 1819
HOT AIR. Dir. Urvashi Pathania. It was 1856 when Eunice Newton Foote made a monumental discovery in climate science. Today, we all know her work, but not her name. This is her story.

Vera Rubin – Born July 23, 1928
INTO THE VOID. Dir. Yossera Bouchtia. Budding astronomer, wife, and young mother Vera Rubin prepares to present her new, groundbreaking research to the American Astronomical Society and discovers a prejudice that runs much deeper than she thought–one that forces her to reassess her own livelihood and weigh her dreams against society’s expectations for women, in this biopic drama set in 1950s New York.

SERIES PILOTS IN DEVELOPMENT

Henrietta Swan Leavitt - Born July 4, 1868
DEAR MISS LEAVITT by Jessica Gonzalez
It’s 1908, and most of the scientific community thinks the universe stops at the edge of the Milky Way. But Henrietta Leavitt, a computer at the Harvard Observatory, believes that the only reason the universe seems so small is because they have no way to measure it. DEAR MISS LEAVITT follows Henrietta as she sets out to find an accurate way to measure the distance between Earth and faraway stars, laying the foundation for legendary astronomers like Edwin Hubble to make discoveries that prove the universe is bigger than anyone imagined and change astronomy forever—all at a time when women weren’t even allowed to operate a telescope.

Rosalind Franklin – Born July 25, 1920
OUR DARK LADY by Kathryn Lo
After James Watson trashes the reputation of scientist Rosalind Franklin in his 1968 memoir on the discovery of DNA’s double helix, a friend seeks to restore her name by investigating what happened at two labs in 1950s England — where Rosalind’s story emerges.

• Alice Ball and THE BALL METHOD
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Science & Film: Could you tell me a little about what you do at NOAA?

Harold Brooks: I'm a research meteorologist. My job titles officially Senior Research Scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory. I tend to spend most of my time thinking about the problems of climatology: the where, when, and and how strong severe weather events are, particularly tornadoes; forecast evaluation, so how do we actually evaluate the quality and value of weather forecasts?; and then issues involving climate and storms. That goes along with the climatology stuff, but it also tries to look at how have things changed? And how might they change?

S&F: How long have you been there?

HB: I came as a postdoc on August 1 of 1990 and became a federal employee on November 2 of 1992. I now realize I've been here for longer than half of the history of the lab.

S&F: So TWISTER came out in 1996 and we're now anticipating TWISTERS. What was your relationship to the original?

HB: In 1994 or 1995 the lab hosted a large field project, at the time the largest field project to look at tornadoes: Vortex. One of the challenges we had was that there was a lot of media interest. TV and print journalism wanted to travel along with vehicles or follow vehicles and do interviews and all that. 1994 was a pretty quiet year storm-wise, we didn't really get any good data that year, which happens with field projects. But also, the media interaction didn't go very well, because one of our top scientists was in the field a lot, they might not get back to late in the evening, and the media wanted to be doing stuff in the morning, and we were having him working 16 hour days sometimes. That wasn't very good. I was involved in some forecasting for the experiment and had been involved in helping design the experiment. For 1995, we knew we needed to do something different. My wife was expecting a child in May of 1995. So, I was going to be in Norman, so said I'll do the media stuff. In December of 94 the lab was contacted by some folks who were going to make a movie.

NOAA public affairs and NOAA headquarters is a group of people who at times live in fear of 'we're going to look bad.' So nobody from headquarters wanted any involvement. They basically said, field projects are going on and you've got a media point person for the field project, we're just going to treat this like it was media.

Still from TWISTER

We were visited by Jan de Bont, the director, who had just done SPEED. Joe Nemec who was production design also came. They did some looking around at the lab. They explained what they were going to do shooting wise, and schedule wise, and they sent at that point a copy of the script. I made some comments back to them about that. The movie didn't go through the normal rewrite process, because as I understand it they had gotten a hold of two people to do the late rewrite. I don't know who one of them was. The other one was Joss Whedon. One of the two guys was in a car wreck, the other guy got pneumonia, or mononucleosis or something. And so the two of them had to back out at the last minute. So Kathy Kennedy ended up doing a little bit of the rewrite, but it was a pretty light rewrite. They started showing up in April. They wanted safety training for cast and crew. They were going to be outside in the springtime in Oklahoma, and so we did a lot of stuff with lightning storms. It was all cast except Paxton, Hunt, Elwes, and Gertz. So everybody other than the four leads.

S&F: Who did you work most closely with?

HB: Probably my closest relationship ended up being with the art department coordinator, who was Carla Nemec. Carla came in and looked our operation center for the field project and basically said, this doesn't look good enough to be something we could show on camera, so we'll have to make it look a little prettier in the movie. And it looked a lot prettier. They apparently filmed another opening of the movie. And that was where this this great meeting of everybody takes place in classroom at OU after the Helen Hunt character has done a lecture. So I gave them stuff to put on a blackboard. I really wish I could get a copy of that snippet because there were some inside jokes for the meteorological community and Carla bought in on it.

So I did that kind of stuff with safety and the art department. Then, on April 17, our first day to get a good storm intercept, in the in the operation center we hosted Paxton. He was in for about three or four hours and he walked in about a minute before we got our first tornado for the field project. He was a very personable guy. He was great. The thing I still remember was that he walked in wearing this jacket that had an Apollo 13 logo on it. And I remember having this feeling--that would make a good movie--not realizing that that was his previous movie. We sent him out with our field teams. Then on the next day we operated, which was April 19. And a bunch of the other cast, the minor cast, that I ended up doing the safety stuff with some of them were met at the airport and went out on this. And that was a really difficult day to operate, because that was the Oklahoma City bombing day. So I was doing all kinds of communicating from the field because the FBI was asking us questions to collect information. Like, if you see this kind of a vehicle, please let us know. The guys who were in the vehicle with Paxton said he was in there listening to everything they said and then repeating a lot of it, he was tape recording and trying to get dialogue to ad lib on things.

Still from TWISTERS

S&F: When you say you operated, what does that mean?

HB: That means we were out collecting data for our field project. In some sense, we were doing what they were trying to do in the movie. We had field teams out with like 10 vehicles in the field and then I was in Norman to pass information along and to do what we call nowcasting, which is basically saying this is what the storms appear to be doing, or are about to do, so you can position yourself for whatever is happening. Our field coordinators deal with the teams in the field.

The last main cast member to arrive was going to be Helen Hunt. I got this message that Helen wants to talk to you. I remember she called the lab and we probably had a two hour long conversation. We went through most of the script. There was one part where she said, does that make any sense? And I go, No, no one would say that. And this was as they were deploying instruments. And asked what they would say. And from a documentary there's a very famous of a friend of mine making the comment deploy, deploy, deploy. And I said, that's what someone actually did say. And she said, I can't guarantee you it'll make it onto the final cut, but I guarantee you will be the first take. It ended up being something like prepare to deploy.

I tangentially knew the guys who were involved in doing the simulations. I was a graduate student at Illinois from 1985 to 1990. We did a visualization of storms with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications of the parent storms of tornadoes. We did a lot of stuff with them for for scientific purposes. Even though he wasn't part of the group that worked on our problem, Stefen Fangmeier was in the office next door, and he ended up basically doing the simulations that showed Spielberg that we could now do the simulations reasonably well. So the first tornado was Stefen's tornado. The rest of them are done by somebody else. And unfortunately, I almost interacted with him--he sent me this email, I'm looking to do simulations of tornadoes, so I need some information on wind speeds for a movie. He didn't tell me what movie. And I had been told to do whatever interaction with the Twister people [they needed] because that had been officially approved, but there were going to be a lot of other things that came out, like for television, at the same time, and [I was told] don't blow them off, but don't help them very much, because you don't need to be having all of your time working with movies. But watching the credits, I go, that's the guy who emailed me, and who never told me what project he was working on. We could have done a lot better with the videos, but that's life.

S&F: What is your feeling about the way the movie turned out, and how do you think it holds up?

HB: I'm a little biased. I recognize that the dialogues is not scientifically very good at times, but it's a movie. I wouldn't want to go to Hollywood for my scientific education. When I saw the script, the first thing I would have done is I would have made it more than one day long. I would have made it we have a failure, and we don't catch it. We don't even see storms. I said, you're out in the Texas panhandle and nothing happens at all, you can have a great romantic moment. We've got a seven-hour drive home, and we're really unhappy. That's real storm chasing--driving forever and not seeing anything. Apparently, Michael Crichton really wanted the time pressure.

One of the things that's actually in there, that's sort of the tribute to the supercomputer group, if you look at the end, when they show the things from Dorothy going up and coming down, things that go are orange, and things that come down are blue. That's a tribute back to Illinois. That was something Stefen got, because that looked like the video we had done with the special interest group.

Still from TWISTERS

S&F: Did you work at all on the new film, TWISTERS?

HB: I had one conversation. This conversation was with someone who was involved and did a little bit with TWISTER but is now retired from the lab. They were still looking for the hook. I'm really afraid they're going to try to blow up a tornado. Really afraid. That bothers because we're going to have people trying to blow up tornadoes.

S&F: Maybe it's too obvious, but why is that such a bad thing?

HB: On the science side, it's because we don't have any idea what it would do. It may actually make things stronger. We don't have any reason to think this is even a good idea to try. And I don't want any of my 100,000 closest friends running around, trying to bomb tornadoes and having things happen that may have less than desirable consequences in some places. So what I suggested, and I'm pretty sure this won't happen, could you imagine having some sort of incredible micro network of high resolution radars that you throw out in front of a storm, and you can then use that to run a really high resolution numerical forecast model that tells you where the tornado is going to be. That allows people the time to get safe and you end up saving lives. I don't like that. I could imagine this is something that could work, but I don't know how deploy 10,000 radars in a small area, but maybe 50 years from now. That would have been my preferred thing for them to do. There is a leap ahead in technology, as opposed to, let's just do something really weird, science-wise.

S&F: My related question just has to do with where the field is headed. Are the problems just getting bigger? Are they getting worse?

HB: At one level, yes, they're getting bigger, but they're also getting smaller. If we think back to 100 years ago, we were actually starting to get an understanding that tornadoes were associated with thunderstorms. People had crude theory about how they formed. If we go ahead to the 1950s, early 1960s, we start to understand, we actually start to know what part of the thunderstorm the worst tornadoes form in. Big big advance because now it's like, it's not just the whole thunderstorm, it's usually a small area within the thunderstorm that we care about. And in about that time and into the early 70s, we started to get some understanding of the environmental conditions in which storms formed, and the radar presentation of storms. And so, we started being able to do more and more. What we're now down to is we're asking more detailed questions about formation, decay, what we oftentimes refer to in the field as failure modes. If we can answer the question, why are there tornadoes? The next question is, why aren't there a lot more? We're asking a lot more detailed questions, we're having to look at finer and finer scales of information. So in some sense, the problems are getting smaller that we're looking at, which makes the observational world harder. When all you care about is the balloons that are launched every 400 kilometers apart, once every 12 hours, that provides the information that's a pretty broad picture. Now, when we care about what's happening 20 meters above the ground in this little, tiny area right before the tornado forms, that's a lot harder to collect data, and to look at. That's where we're headed is getting that kind of fine scale information, and then figuring out how do we deal with the fact that we know we don't observe everything perfectly? So how do we combine all those observations with some uncertainty to actually make forecasts of what will be happening in the near future? And then, what's really the hard problem, is given the fact that we can forecast with the weather will be, how do we provide information to people in a way that they can make good decisions for themselves and prepared for the event? How much do we need to do? A lot of the tornado dangers are associated with housing quality. How do we make information that's useful? I think that's our biggest challenge now.

♦

• Living with Disasters: Economist Sonali Deraniyagala Considers WOMAN IN THE DUNES
• Surviving Together: Mika McKinnon on MOONFALL
• Earth Quackery: SAN ANDREAS

Last May, while in New York with his partner and collaborator Marion Scemama–a filmmaker in her own right, known for her passionate and creative friendship with David Wojnarowicz, and whose films were screened at MoMA this Spring–Pain visited the American Folk Art Museum. Together, Pain and I looked at the ways in which his filmed interviews of Catalan psychiatrist Francesc Tosquelles (conducted with Danielle Sivadon and Jean-Claude Polack in the late 1980s) punctuated the exhibition Francesc Tosquelles: Avant-Garde Psychiatry and the Birth of Art Brut currently on view. An extraordinary archive of a psychiatric revolution that took root in Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole in Southern France in the 1930s and grew at La Borde Clinic near Paris after WWII, Pain’s images capture Tosquelles’s force of character. It testifies to the complexity of this thinker and practitioner, whose ingenuity is only matched by his unpolished eccentricity.

The exhibition constituted an ideal context to talk with Pain and learn from his first-hand knowledge of a lesser-know, but key, figure of institutional psychotherapy who has only recently received his due. The interview was translated from French and condensed for clarity.

François Pain will be traveling to New York again this week to present his film LE DIVAN DE FÉLIX and participate in a Q&A session with filmmaker Abdenour Zahzah on Friday, June 21 at Museum of the Moving Image. This screening is part of the film series Radical Institutions and Experimental Psychiatry: The Legacy of Francesc Tosquelles taking place from June 21 to 23 in conjunction with the exhibition Francesc Tosquelles: Avant-Garde Psychiatry and the Birth of Art Brut on view at the American Folk Art Museum, New York, from April 12 to August 18, 2024.

Mathilde Walker-Billaud: How did you get involved in institutional psychotherapy?

François Pain: In 1966, it was my first year studying medicine and I already wanted to focus my studies on psychiatry. I applied for placement in La Borde over the summer. I was accepted and then I stayed there for six years, full- time during weekends and holidays! In the end, La Borde was my real university. It was a place of extraordinary freedom, where we could be whoever we wanted to be… There was a very creative relationship to ‘madness.’ We created workshops in order to do things with the patients. I did a lot of theater; I was in charge of the newspaper La Borde Eclair, and to embellish it, I had created a silk-screen printing workshop. What I learned at La Borde was invaluable: the freedom to think, to create, to be politically engaged where you are (“l’engagement politique là où tu es”) on a micro and institutional basis. The staff at La Borde was very involved in the struggles of the period whether it was the Algerian War, the Vietnam War, or the women's rights movement.

MWB: How did the medium of film appear in this context?

FP: Film arrived very early at La Borde. As late as the 1950s, René Laloux, who worked at La Borde, produced his first animated cartoon LES DENTS DU SINGE, in collaboration with the clinic’s residents. Numerous documentaries and feature films have also been produced there, both by professionals and amateur filmmakers.

In 1973, I joined the CERFI [Center for Institutional Study, Research and Development] which had contracts with the State, care institutions, and private organizations. The method shared by both the researchers and all the authors was transdisciplinary, and their work was based on institutional analysis. Most of this research was published in the review Recherches.

That year I took a trip to Canada. In Montreal, I discovered the Vidéographe, one of the first centers devoted to lightweight videography, which gave people with film projects, documentary or fiction, access to filming and editing equipment. There I discovered a new piece of equipment: the Sony Portapack, a portable video recorder that we connected to our camera. Lightweight video was born, and with it, a democratic re-appropriation of audio-visual production and distribution methods. It was from this invention that video art developed and took on an international dimension. In Paris, for example, the American Cultural Center and Don Foresta were the driving forces behind the expansion of video in the artistic field. The other advantage of this new technique was that it allowed feedback. The rushes could be shown back to the people who had been filmed.

When I got back to Paris, I suggested setting up a video group at CERFI. We bought some equipment and used video for some of our research. In addition to written notes, we would document the research with filmed elements. We were proposing a mode of reading different from writing.

The same year, I met Jean-Pierre Beauviala, the creator of the Äaton Camera, an extraordinary camera on which he added a small camera capturing in video the footage, so the operator could immediately see what was filmed. I made all my first videos with this camera Paluche which you used like a mic. It was as if I had an eye at the tip of my fingers. It's the tool with which I made all my first ‘video-art’ films.

MWB: Did you start making films about La Borde at that time too?

FP: There had been a break between my film practice and my psychiatric work. Towards the end of the 1970s I helped set up a video workshop at La Borde, but I was not working there anymore. Then a number of workshops were set up using both video and super-8 films. In 1988, the annual congress of the Croix-Marine [a national gathering for all the psychiatric hospitals’ clubs] was held in Blois, France. Instead of exhibiting objects created by patients–embroidery, pottery, etc–La Borde had decided to show the clinic's activities through a film. I suggested taking inspiration from a story Fernand Deligny had told me, The Crystal Wave. This text had been created as part of a writing workshop he had run at La Borde. THE CRYSTAL WAVE (1988) was the first film I made within the field of psychiatry.

MWB: In the 1980s, you also filmed the leading practitioners of institutional psychotherapy including Francesc Tosquelles who worked at the Saint-Alban psychiatric hospital during WWII until the early 1960s. What was your impetus to make the documentary about a lesser-known figure?

FP: Tosquelles was one of the central figures of institutional psychotherapy. It was he who best grasped the issues, both political and psychoanalytical, involved in the management and organization of hospitals. He was one of the main figures in the psychiatric revolution that developed in France between the Second World War and the early 1970s. He reinvented psychiatry. He made it a tool that goes beyond the mere reorganization of psychiatry, where politics, psychoanalysis, aesthetics and artistic creation complement each other. It was a way of thinking that appealed to everyone. He took a positive view of “madness.” “If a man isn't ‘mad,’ then he isn't anything at all,” he joked once on the radio. “The person we put in a psychiatric hospital is the one who fails his or her madness.” I was lucky enough to have been in analysis with him for four years.

INTERVIEW TOSQUELLES, 1987, film still. Collection François Pain.

MWB: How would you describe Tosquelles’s key contribution to institutional psychotherapy?

FP: The key to describing his contribution to institutional psychotherapy is his own life. Tosquelles's life is a real adventure novel about a super-talented young man who used his intelligence to improve the way in which ‘madness’ was treated. He began studying medicine at the age of 15 [in Spain]. He soon became involved in unions and political struggles. He joined the POUM [Marxist Unification Workers' Party] and the Republican ranks against Franco's regime. In 1937, at the age of 25, he was put in charge of the psychiatric services of the Republican army. During those two years, he pioneered the concept of sector psychiatry (la psychiatrie de secteur), which he organized on the front line “so that patients could be cared for in a place close to the front, where they got into trouble.” Another care model that he set up was therapeutic communities. This technique was widely used at both Saint-Alban and La Borde, and formed the basis of institutional psychotherapy practices.

MWB: Community is at the heart of institutional psychotherapy. Actually, another name for his work at Saint-Alban is “social psychiatry…”

FP: Social psychiatry? You could put it this way, in the sense that the caregivers did everything to bring patients out of their isolation, to increase their opportunities to meet other people, to “socialize.”

And Tosquelles went very far in the socialization of psychiatry, in the “hosting” of the patients [‘l’accueil’ – a term used to designate a listening and inclusive attitude toward the persons living with mental illness]. At Saint-Alban, Tosquelles set up the Club des malades, which managed not only certain activities but also venues. The bar, for example, was run entirely by the patients, as well as printing and other workshops. At La Borde, Oury organized transportation between the clinic and the town of Blois, where there were trains to/from Paris. The car driving service “La Chauffe” was entirely taken care of by the patients–which was something quite exceptional [and officially authorized by the local administration].

MWB: And the caregivers didn’t all come from the medical field.

FP: It was one of institutional psychotherapy’s strong particularities. For Tosquelles, as for Oury, it was not necessary to have only qualified people: nurses, music, or art therapists. What was important was whether or not the caregivers had the capacity to deal with ‘madness.’ It was the same principle at La Borde. I wasn't a psychiatrist, but I think I did a pretty good job with the patients!

MWB: Can you talk about the making process of the documentary on Tosquelles – what did you all learn from your interview with him?
FP: We wanted to know everything about him: his childhood, his family, his political commitments, why he became a psychiatrist... And we met several characters. He was a Marxist, a bit of an anarchist, a Poumist, a Catalanist but also an internationalist. He was a medical student, a Freudian, a philosopher, a historian, and a great joker... He called psychiatry “deconniatry” [a made-up world combining psychiatry and déconner (fooling around, talking bullshit)]. He co-wrote with philosopher Jacques Ellul La Genèse aujourd’hui (The Book of Genesis Today), the first great Freudian-Marxist book, he said…

MWB: A multifaceted man, with a lot of convictions!

FP: Certainly. Tosquelles was a figure who didn’t back pedal. Even when he was a kid, he took strong positions, with a great sense of humor. Free-spoken, he immediately chose sides, and his position was clear from the beginning of his medical training. He was a Marxist anti-Stalinist. He ended up being condemned to death by the Francists and the Stalinists.

François Pain, FÉLIX’S COUCH, 1985, film still.

MWB: Were psychiatrists at La Borde as politically engaged as Tosquelles ?

FP: Oury was less militant than Tosquelles, but Guattari was political. Actually, Guattari and Tosquelles were a little similar–that’s probably why their relationships often made sparks fly!

To understand La Borde, one must think of Youth Hostels [type of YMCA], where people from the working-class connected to communism were spending their vacation. The group needed to organize to run the house made available to them for several weeks. When Guattari was in charge of the schedule at La Borde, he applied the same principle.

MWB: The famous schedule mentioned in your video LE DIVAN DE FÉLIX (1985)! Guattari confesses that when he was admitted to Saint-Alban (to escape conscription to the Algerian War), he realized that patients were constantly solicited to participate in activities, and this experience had changed his approach to La Borde’s schedule. Your films give us the impression that the practitioners and the patients constantly learn from one another. They reveal a network of interactions, dialogues and friendships inside and outside the hospital. Can you talk about your insistence on the lived experience, your humanist approach to the practice of psychiatry?
FP: It's because I worked at La Borde. It was important to transmit what I experienced. I also wanted to share what I learnt from Tosquelles as a human being, to transmit what he said. The films are channels of transmission.

MWB: In LE DIVAN DE FÉLIX, Guattari mentions Tosquelles another time, when he speaks with you and Danielle Sivadon about his aesthetical dimension, his dada spirit. This brings us back to the American Folk Art Museum’s current exhibition on the work of this psychiatrist across the fields of experimental psychiatry, communism and surrealism.

FP: Yes, and, as it happens here [in AFAM’s gallery], art is omnipresent. Illness has a creative side, may it be in poetry, in painting, or something else. What I mean is that it has an aesthetic; it’s a sort of aesthetic of life. You know, Saint-Alban, like La Borde, was poor. Some renovations had been made, but it was not a luxury hospital. There was something else–an immense creativity, with the journal meetings, the workshops… We can witness it in the films by Tosquelles, or [Mario] Ruspoli.

MWB: Could we consider Tosquelles as a dada figure, a dada psychiatrist?

FP: Tosquelles was plugged into surrealism. He was himself totally surrealistic. He was like a character coming from the theater, an incredible human being. I liked the way he spoke about surrealism: something more real than the real. [Tosquelles invited us to] push boundaries and go further, but within the confines of the real. It’s important to move toward things that we don’t fully control.

♦

• Radical Institutions Film Series at MoMI
• Director Interview: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s TORI AND LOKITA
• FREUD Consultant, Psychoanalyst & Hypnotherapist Juan Rios

SHORT FILMS

AFRONAUTS. Dir. Nuotama Bodomo. It is July 16, 1969: America is preparing to launch Apollo 11. Thousands of miles away, the Zambia Space Academy hopes to beat America to the moon. Inspired by true events. Watch it here on scienceandfilm.org.

THE BALL METHOD. Dir. Dag Abebe. The untold story of African-American chemist Alice Ball, who at the age of 23 found an effective treatment for leprosy in 1915 Hawaii. Available to rent or buy.

LET THERE BE LIGHT. Dir. Jon K. Jones. LET THERE BE LIGHT is based on the true story of African American inventor, draftsman, scientist, poet, and American Civil War veteran Lewis H. Latimer, who struggles to balance love and scientific curiosity amidst the turn of the 20th century in the United States.

FEATURE FILMS

CODED BIAS. Dir. Shalini Kantayya. Modern society sits at the intersection of two crucial questions: What does it mean when artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly governs our liberties? And what are the consequences for the people AI is biased against? When MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini discovers that most facial-recognition software does not accurately identify darker-skinned faces and the faces of women, she delves into an investigation of widespread bias in algorithms. As it turns out, AI is not neutral, and women are leading the charge to ensure our civil rights are protected. Available on Netflix.

HIDDEN FIGURES. Dir. Theodore Melfi. HIDDEN FIGURES uncovers the true story of the Black female mathematicians at NASA who helped win the space race against America's rivals in the Soviet Union and, at the same time, sent the quest for equal rights and opportunity rocketing forwards. The film centers on Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson who worked at NASA as "human computers" in the 1950s. Hidden Figures is based on the Sloan-supported book by Margot Lee Shetterly, Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race. Available on Disney+.

IN DEVELOPMENT

A MAN WITH A MISSING FACE by Temi Ojo
An elderly Black man awakens from a coma to find his body severely burned from a fiery car crash. When he is offered a life risking face transplant surgery, his daughter must reconcile her emotional trauma with the new person her father is becoming. Inspired by the true story of Robert Chelsea, the first black man and oldest person to receive a full face transplant.

GOLIATH by Anthony Onah
After a brilliant African American scientist discovers a leading pesticide may be harmful, paranoia and rage threaten to consume him as he battles its manufacturer, the most powerful chemical company in the world. Based on a true story.

ONE HAND WASHES THE OTHER by Malique Guinn
After being blindsided by a deceitful peer, a stubborn college student builds a replica of the first wooden clock in America, bringing justice to both himself and Benjamin Banneker.

THE PECULIAR CASE OF J. MARION SIMS by Samantha Chamblee
In a world where your body is not your own, 15-year-old Maisey is sold to the good doctor J. Marion Sims. While working in his “haunted” house, she has to discover what makes him so peculiar in time to save herself from the man who would heal us all.

WOODSIDE by Gerard Shaka
While struggling to cope with an abusive father and a complacent mother, a queer Bahamian boy discovers self-love through his experiences replanting mangroves with a marine conservationist.

• Alice Ball and THE BALL METHOD
• Meet the Filmmaker: Frances Bodomo
• Shalini Kantayya Considers Algorithmic Justice in Coded Bias

Where is the school located and why did you choose it?

It’s as if I was in Queens or something like that. The school is one kilometer from the entrance of Paris. I had been scouting a bit in Paris, because at the beginning I wanted to film only in the courtyard and the courtyards were very nice and new because they had been changed for the girls. They used to be only devoted to football, so the girls had to wait against the walls. But the children were from a wealthier background in these schools, so I went to the suburbs. I had done a film in Ivry, YOUNG SOLITUDE (2008), and I liked the high school very much. I loved this school because the courtyard was very big and open, and I love the yellow and orange look of the school in the middle of the gray surroundings. And I loved the director of the school. I realized that most of the children came from the surrounding buildings and that there were a lot of immigrants, and it was very interesting.

At one point you follow a new student entering the gates of the school. When in the school year were you shooting?

I shot it in May, June, the beginning of July, and then the beginning of the next year. Because if you film in a school, it is a rule for me: you have to film when the children and the teachers know each other. Otherwise, it takes a lot of time to see [what you need to see]. I had done this film PLAYTIME [aka RECREATIONS] about a kindergarten courtyard 30 years ago and it was the same: I filmed in May and June. I didn’t want the idea that [the film] was all year, but it was important to show how the children were welcome in that school with the first sequence. I thought it was so beautiful how he takes the child by the hand every time, and then we can see the world from the point of view of the child. But the reality is, yes, I’ve been cheating because that’s at the beginning of the [next] year. By May, June, and the beginning of July, the classes were well organized, and the children knew each other in the courtyard, so it was more interesting.

Still from ELEMENTARY

It felt like you were filming at the level of the children. How are you holding the camera and what kind of camera is it?

It’s a photography camera, the [Sony] FX3. And I had a screen because to be outside you have to have a screen otherwise you see nothing. You can’t have a viewer. But it’s fine. We bought the camera with my producer for that purpose, to be able to film at that good level. It’s perfect for me to film at their level.

It’s terrific because you’re not looking down at the students.

No, of course!

And the perspective also makes the children look like little adults.

Of course! But it’s because when you film even children, they are heroes. You don’t think of them as they will grow up, you think of them as the characters they are.

Were there children you realized early on you wanted to follow?

Yeah, I love the one that is playing as if he was in Roland-Garros [a tennis tournament in Paris], how he turns his head. He’s such a great actor! There was another one that I thought was like Jacques Villeret, a famous actor in France. He was so funny and great. I filmed him for a very long time with the teacher saying to him, “Come on!” But what I liked and what I wanted is the relationship between the children and the teachers, because you could see in the faces of the children their emotions and what they felt all the time. And the terror: “Oh I was wrong!”

What was different since the last time you made a documentary in a school?

Well, when I arrived they all did TikTok [poses]. I had to tell them that they looked terrible. And if they wanted to look nice, they had to stop. Because the film will never go on the social network! So they said, “Okay okay okay... but come and film the football!”

So you mean they’re more aware, more presentational?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The pedagogy in the school is fascinating, the topics they’re talking about, like the discussion about religion. Some kids already had very definite ideas about how people should behave.

[laughs] Yeah, that’s Wassim, the little boy. He’s hyperactive. The teacher was often fed up with him. But this work that they do in all the classes is called “cultural mediation.” It’s the morning or the afternoon, and we see two examples in the film: the story about Orphée and the story about religion. The teacher also reads a chapter from Jules Verne.

Still from ELEMENTARY

Right, about Phineas Fogg from AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS!

Yeah! So then there are questions to see if they have understood the story well, and then there is a debate about one idea, a philosophical topic. And so in Elodie’s class, they put the children in groups of four, and one has to tell the whole class what they have said. It is to make them think and debate, and I had this incredible luck with the topic of religion. But what is also incredible is they laugh a lot about it.

In another sequence, they’re singing this very melancholic song about love. What is that song?

Oh that’s by Bigflo. It’s a wonderful song and the clip is so good! “It’s a pity you didn’t go and tell her you love her, it’s a pity you didn’t do it, it’s a pity.” The children chose the song. And they don’t understand exactly because in the end it’s about femicide: a mother is beaten and killed by her husband. They were just trying to sing it properly preparing for the end of the year. That’s why I show them in the courtyard singing “Diamonds” [by Rihanna]. It’s a cultural question: they are not listening to Schubert at home but probably they will listen to Rihanna. You can see they are very good at Rihanna’s music.

The math class is taught in a wonderfully natural way. Was part of that showing how a teacher could connect with the students?

Yeah, and they are in the first grade, they’re the smallest. So they’re very good, in fact. [snaps fingers] We wanted to show the natural academic learning at the beginning, and also go against the idea that they are stupid because they are children of immigrants. And I love the way you can see the little boy who has to count it out in his head. [laughs]

Any time the children were not in the shot, it was less interesting. I used to have a lot of [scenes of] discussions between the director of the school and teachers. But the editor kept telling me that it’s useless to have only an adult in the scene.

That reflects the philosophy of the film, because you’re centering on the kids and their choices, more than the teachers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And their emotions.

And you’re so good at catching those emotional moments. There are movies about classrooms that don’t do it this well.

What’s important is that it’s an ordinary school. I liked very much the film that won the Silver Bear in Berlin called MR. BACHMANN AND HIS CLASS (2021). But it’s not an ordinary class, it’s a class for immigrants to learn to be in [a new country]. [In ELEMENTARY] this is an ordinary school. I really like ordinary things, I’m very sorry. You know, average schools, average hospitals, all average, because it’s more important. It’s like the first time I did a fiction [film] about family planning, and I remember that what moved me the most was when a girl had forgotten her pill. Because then you realize that you have to take it every day, that it changes the whole world, the fact that you had the pill, and what it meant for her. This is the most ordinary thing! And it tells the most about us, you know? It’s not exceptional, it’s just everyday life.

ELEMENTARY is definitely a movie I want to see again to watch what everyone’s doing on screen.

I hope it will be released in the U.S., because it was really strong for me to have OUR BODY there and also THE COMPETITION (2016). I must thank the Americans. Critics in America have been nice to me.

It’s different in France?

I think that for example to show a film in the country, France is the best place, because we have art houses everywhere, everyone goes to the movies, and when we do a premiere of a documentary there are 300 people in the room, and that’s wonderful. But in America... I don’t know, I feel grateful. I had this prize in True/False [film festival], and it was really nice. I said to one of the heads of French TV, “Look, in the States, it’s private enterprise everywhere, but PBS helped Fred Wiseman from the beginning to the end, and they can be really proud of that. Can you tell me who you helped?” And he said, “You’re right.”

Did you see the Frederick Wiseman film that screened in Cannes Classics, LAW AND ORDER (1969)?

I know it by heart. We gave him the Carrosse d’Or [a special tribute award in Directors’ Fortnight] three years ago, and I was the most activist about [the award]. I had crossed paths with Wiseman several times, but we became very good friends. I really like all his work—and the person! He’s so nice. As a filmmaker, I would never have these discussions with Godard, and I have them with Wiseman! He was so generous and supportive when I did OUR BODY, and he knew I was sick. He said, “I can help you, I can do anything you want.” And we were talking: “Hospitals are just great to film in, yes. And the end of life—it’s the best, you know?” We had so much fun.

Have you shown ELEMENTARY to the school yet?

Not to the children, but the teachers loved the film. It’s the first protagonist that I have in a film that has such a precise view of the film. They said, this is really our school. They were here with me in Cannes, the school’s director and all the teachers. We walked on the [red carpet] steps, we had the dresses and everything. We are doing a screening in the cinema of Ivry in June with the children and the parents. I hope the children will shout during the screening!

♦

• Director Interview: Christopher Zalla on RADICAL
• Behind Bhutan's Happy Image: AGENT OF HAPPINESS
• Someone not Something: Victor Kossakovsky on GUNDA

On the occasion of INSIDE OUT 2’s release, revisit Science & Film’s 2016 interview with Daniel Goleman, internationally renowned psychologist, author of Emotional Intelligence, and a pioneer in the field of social-emotional intelligence.

Science & Film: What can kids learn from watching INSIDE OUT?

Daniel Goleman: Kids can learn a lot from watching that film. I was a co-founder of the movement to teach social-emotional learning in schools to help kids understand their own emotional life, empathize, cooperate, and so on. I think this is a fabulous aid because kids learn different emotions, they learn that you are not your emotions, and they learn that emotions come and go. They also learn that there are a range of foundational experiences in your life which provide a sense of basic security, or not, and that your early experiences can shape your later experiences. In other words, there is a range of fundamental understandings about our emotional life that are communicated in the movie quite skillfully. Yet you don’t feel like it’s a teaching movie.

S&F: Right, emotions are represented as characters.

DG: Exactly, it’s clever.

S&F: Psychologist Paul Ekman was an advisor on INSIDE OUT but his view that there are six universal basic emotions has been criticized by some for being too simplistic. Do you agree with this critique?

DG: This is one of those areas in science where there is no final answer, just points of view, and people who have other points of view criticize Ekman. I would say that most emotions researchers probably agree with him, but there will always be critics. My own feeling is that it is a huge service to the public to get the point across that different emotions create different personal realities, reactions, ways of processing information, and skews in perception. The fact that he used Ekaman’s six isn’t as important as what kids can learn in general about their emotional life from the movie.

S&F: Do you think the filmmakers did a good job dramatizing the psychology?

DG: I thought they did a fabulous job. It’s one of my favorite movies.

S&F: Who is your favorite character?

DG: Well, I was rooting for Joy, but I thought Anger was pretty cool.

S&F: Do any of the topics in the film relate to things you’re thinking about now in your work?

DG: I just wrote a book called The Triple Focus: A New Approach to Education, with Peter Senge, which talks about the next steps in social-emotional learning–which is a very large movement now across the country. I feel that INSIDE OUT moves the bar in the right direction because it’s educating masses of kids about the fundamentals of emotional life, which means that it’s helping further the movement’s goal to have kids learn the basics of understanding and managing their feelings.

♦

• Interview with Pixar's Danielle Feinberg
• Finding Dory, The Amnesic Royal Blue Tang
• A.I. and SAG-AFTRA: Revisiting THE CONGRESS

The interview has been re-published in its entirety below.

Science & Film: I left THE GRAB with the distinct impression that this is a story in which no individual wins–with the possible exception of the Russian cowboys. How does that resonate with each of you?

Nate Halverson: Russia, scientists forecast, is going to be able to increase its total food production [due to the effects of climate change]. Canada also. Those are two unique examples, but the current food baskets of the world—particularly the U.S.—are looking at having harvests widely, detrimentally disrupted in the coming decades. There are going to be far more losers than winners, and we’re already seeing that. We are also beginning to see those who are looking to capitalize off of that change. We had one investor say to us, Armageddon is more likely than not, and this is how to position your money in that scenario. We’re seeing more action from investors than we are effective responses from government and those who should be in a position to protect people.

Gabriela Cowperthwaite: This is a film about equality. It seems like it’s about food, water, scarcity, climate change, but this crosscuts the haves and have-nots. There are people who benefit off of scarcity. You’re watching them look at the whole discussion around climate change and say, keep talking about that, slow down on that legislation, because the jury is still out on climate change, and while you’re doing that we’re just going to scoop up everything that’s left for ourselves. [With the film,] we are trying to blow the doors open on that, and help people realize that it’s up to us to start holding power accountable.

S&F: You start the film talking about Smithfield Foods and China owning one in four U.S. pigs. It’s a startling statement, but I just want to ask the simple question: so what?

NH: In and of itself, you’re right, so what? But once you begin to recognize that there is a pattern, a national strategy developed by the Chinese government that this thing is the result of, then you start asking, why is that a national strategy? Do other places have that national strategy? What does that mean in terms of how they’re forecasting the future of the world? What does that mean for most people in the world? The answers are really disturbing and should be upsetting to everyone alive.

GC: Each of the stories [in the film] in and of themselves are fairly innocuous. China eats pork, so what? They own some pigs. Russian cowboys, isn’t this a fun side story? Once you put them into context and realize they’re part of a larger system that is essentially taking the final airable land left on the planet out from underneath us while we’re ostensibly not paying attention, you start seeing that this is an insidious direction we’re all moving in. We had to see what was behind it, and each of the stories was a portal of entry into what power is doing on this planet right now.

S&F: What was the relationship between your journalism, Nate, and the film?

NH: We started reporting on this as a film around 2017. Prior to that, I had been doing short-form news pieces and we had the great fortune of being introduced to Gabriela who is a master storyteller and has a history and desire to tell heavy, impactful stories. I just wanted to provide her the investigative ammo for her to put it together in the most interesting, compelling way to help people connect the dots.

GC: It was such an incredible treasure trove for a documentarian. The only thing I knew had to happen was to shape it into a narrative. I knew we didn’t have two hours and had to shape it into 90 minutes.

S&F: Why 90 minutes?

GC: Because I know that people only have the emotional and intellectual ability to take bite-sized chunks of something heavy, that feeds your brain. With that knowledge I thought, I’ve got to entertain, I’ve got to make sure they don’t leave their seats—I always call it a bouillon cube of information. The symbiotic relationship between Nate and I was me saying, “can this fit into THE GRAB? Is this literally a grab? Are there people on the ground we can talk to? Is this an intuitively accessible story?” Then, Nate would look through all his reporting and identify what was. We did this dance for six years. Some things fell by the wayside, but those things might find a home in a podcast in the future.

NH: We cooked up a 12-course meal and served a three-course meal.

S&F: In a story like this where the evil is capitalism, and it feels so big picture, what do you hope individuals take away?

GC: I will say, to riff of something Nate told me, there is big systemic change and then there is small change, individual change, and both have to happen simultaneously. The big systemic change has to do with things like: the U.S. has no national water strategy. Water laws were written in the 1800s, at a time when we thought resources were interminable. So, water legislation from top down needs to happen. As citizens we understand why, so when you see that legislation come forward, get behind it. This is hopefully fodder for holding power and government accountable.

We all have to change if even a little bit. We all have to eat less meat. We all have to think about consuming our food in more of a closed-circuit system; shop at farmer’s markets, you can’t be buying a watermelon in December. Also, if someone comes away from this movie and sees people throwing up perfectly good food, I want that to feel like a gut punch. If that is all we take from this, then someone has changed. Each of us just has to move a little bit for us to right ship.

NH: The world used to be very different, and people became aware of the issues of their time, they demanded change and changed the world. We are in one of those inflection points where if people see change needs to be taken and they don’t take it, it’s going to be devastating. This film is part of the collective knowledge of the issue at hand—a huge issue of our time. We need to tackle it systemically and societally, and if we don’t—you don’t need to take my word, you can take the CIA’s word—it’s going to be cataclysmic.

♦

• Director Interview: Ian Cheney on New Release THE ARC OF OBLIVION
• Science Films at Tribeca Film Festival 2023
• Nuclear Feelings: Irene Lusztig on RICHLAND

KINGDOM OF THE PLANETS OF THE APES is the newest installment in the PLANET OF THE APES franchise and takes place approximately 300 years after the fall of the chimpanzee leader and series protagonist, Caesar. The new film follows a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) named Noa, who is played by Owen Teague. Noa’s village is raided by a rebel group of “apes,” leading to the capture of Noa’s family and community members, and to the death of his father, Koro (Neil Sandilands). Noa promises to bring his family home and sets out beyond the group’s territory to find his clan.

Before going any further, I feel that two important points need to be made. The first is that humans and chimpanzees are both in the great ape family, along with bonobos (Pan paniscus), gorillas (Gorilla), and orangutans (Pongo). All five species of great ape are represented in KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. To be consistent with the film and franchise, which do not consider humans as apes, I will refer to all nonhuman great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans) as “apes.” The second point is that all apes are endangered in the wild – with human activities as the largest threat to their survival. In reality, chimpanzees and other apes need our help; we are the only species that can save them. Apes Together Strong.

Proximus Caesar in KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2023 20th Century Studios.
In terms of the film’s portrayal of the various apes, I am sorry to break it to fans of the franchise who might have gotten this impression, but Proximus Caesar is not a bonobo (evolved or otherwise). Bonobos are smaller and more gracile than chimpanzees, and the two species differ in their social organization. While a single alpha male is typically in charge of chimpanzee groups (patriarchal), bonobo social groups are led by multiple females (matriarchal). At the age of sexual maturity, bonobo females leave their natal group and emigrate to a new community – forming close bonds with the resident females of the new group. Chimpanzee females also emigrate at the age of sexual maturity, but it is the male-male bonds that are the most important for this species. Based on appearance and behavior, it is more likely that Proximus Caesar is a chimpanzee than a bonobo. It would be great to see the franchise explore the role female bonds play in bonobo sociality, or to include a more accurate representation of bonobos in future films. The only bonobo research center in the world is the Ape Initiative, where you can learn more.

The most bonobo-like character in the film is in fact the fun-loving jokester, Anaya. Bonobos have long, dark faces, with pale eyelids and lips – much like Anaya. Anaya’s jovial (and sometimes risky) attitude, loyalty to his friends, and fear in the face of conflict are all reminiscent of bonobos. As a viewer, you feel great compassion for Anaya. His character brings a curious, playful, and often nerve-wracking energy to the film. Another standout ape in the film is the orangutan, Raka. If only we got to see more of him.

Raka in KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios.

Since the original 1968 PLANET OF THE APES film was released, people have been fascinated with the idea of what life would look like if apes were the predominant species on the planet. The franchise has expanded on this concept, touching on captivity, exploitation, and warfare. KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES shows us the ultimate reversal of our current existence, with humans being hunted by apes and struggling to survive.

In the new film, Noa encounters a human named Mae (Freya Allan), who is one of the last remaining humans with spoken language. Along with orangutan Raka (played by Peter Macon), Noa helps Mae escape the rebel ape group, saves Mae from drowning in the rapids, and accompanies Mae inside a former human intelligence base – fighting against the other apes. Mae’s distrust of Noa and the other apes, while reasonably warranted, leaves the viewer stunned as she clenches a gun behind her back in the final scene. The filmmakers play with this duality – us vs. them, human vs. ape – throughout the films in the franchise. However, the new film steps into a league of its own.

In addition to obvious advances in CGI, KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES brings a refreshingly nonhuman approach to the focal apes of the film. As an expert in great ape social communication, I was blown away by Teague’s portrayal of chimpanzee gestures, body postures, and movements. Teague based his character Noa on a chimpanzee living at the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula, Florida, and his research really shows. Of course, the film keeps true to the franchise, with engaging anthropomorphized apes at the helm. However, it is worth noting the filmmakers’ success in portraying the ape characters as less human-like than previous installments.

Noa in KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2023 20th Century Studios.

The film starts with Noa and his two friends, Soona (Lydia Peckham) and Anaya (Travis Jeffery), searching for eagle nests at the top of the canopy. Noa’s group of chimpanzees are unique; they raise and train eagles. Noa’s father, Koro, is the Leader of the Eagle Clan. The thought of a species other than humans keeping birds is both intriguing and terrifying. Humans have long since believed that the ability to harness nature is in our hands alone. We know symbiotic relationships exist between different species in the wild. For example, Oxpeckers clean and eat ticks off of ungulates living in the African Savannah; the birds receive a consistent food supply and the zebras, wildebeests, and other ungulates, are kept free of parasites. Examples of housing, breeding, and training birds, however, do not exist outside of humans. The film does a wonderful job of exploring what this scenario might look like in another species, with the chimpanzees showing great respect for the eagles. Noa and his clan’s relationships with the eagles symbolizes a rich culture which will ultimately lead to their success.

While the filmmakers do understand the power of an eagle’s beak, they ignore the best physical weapon that an ape has – their maxillary canines. Aside from humans, apes have large, sharp canine teeth that they can use to rip apart animal flesh. Researchers have documented male gorillas and chimpanzees killing members of their own kind, with both species being capable of lethally biting another individual. The apes depicted in the franchise would certainly take advantage of this weapon before shooting an arrow or firing a gun. This is also something that sets the apes apart from the humans in the film and could be leveraged in future installments. We are often so focused on what makes humans unique, that we forget about the factors that make chimpanzees, gorillas, and other apes unique.

For humans, it is our ability to communicate and cooperate that makes us so special. It leads to empathy and compassion, results in productive collaborations, and lays the foundation of success for our species. However, group-identity and our ability to cooperate with certain individuals is also responsible for many of the negative things that we associate with being human (coordinated violence, coalitions to promote hate, unified warfare). The concept of us vs. them is ultimately a result of humans’ sophisticated ability to communicate and cooperate. In some ways, it is harrowing to watch the KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES story play out – the more human something becomes, the more it hurts and harms members of its own kind.

The ending of the film suggests that the next installment may take us into space – an idea I hope the filmmakers pause on. I personally would like to see how we can clean up this planet of the apes, before jetting off to a new one. The franchise is at a unique point where the filmmakers could forge a new path into the world of great ape cooperation – moving away from the gun-toting, war-leading apes, or the glorification of apes in space. Will it be a group of elder bonobo females that shows us a path to peace?

♦

• Chimpanzees and WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES
• Big Love for the Forest: Virpi Suutari on ONCE UPON A TIME IN A FOREST
• UNLOCKING THE CAGE: Swimming in a Sea of Sentience

Those interested in further exploring the pressing issue of artificial intelligence can look forward to two documentaries from Greg Kohs at the festival. While Kohs’s 2017 film ALPHAGO will play in the Reunions & Retrospectives section and THE THINKING GAME will play in the Spotlight Documentary section, both focus on the nature and limitations of artificial intelligence. We also recommend the latest from Sloan grantee and ARC OF OBLIVION director Ian Cheney, whose new documentary SHELF LIFE explores themes of aging and decay through the lens of cheesemaking.

SPOTLIGHT+

GROUP THERAPY. Dir. Neil Berkeley. World Premiere. “Neil Berkeley’s latest is a thoughtful and humorous navigation of personal conversations on mental health. Produced by Kevin Hart, this unique documentary takes the form of a group therapy session led by some of today’s funniest comedians.”

SPOTLIGHT NARRATIVE

MEMES & NIGHTMARES. Dir. Charles Todd, Matt Mitchener. World Premiere. “If one of the most popular memes goes missing from Twitter, would anyone notice? Executive Produced by LeBron James and Maverick Carter, NBA Twitter King Josiah Johnson seeks an answer, where his journey explores our relationship with ephemeral media.”

SPOTLIGHT DOCUMENTARY

DUST TO DUST. Dir. Kosai Sekine. International Premiere. “Yuima Nakazato, one of the most promising designers in Japan, journeys to Kenya to learn about how the fashion industry has impacted the climate crisis and to search for solutions.”

HOW I FAKED MY LIFE WITH AI. Dir. Kyle Vorbach. World Premiere. “In an era where reality and fiction blur, filmmaker Kyle Vorbach attempts to use cutting-edge AI technology to fake his way into the life of his dreams.”

Still from HOW I FAKED MY LIFE WITH AI. Courtesy of Tribeca Festival.

THE THINKING GAME. Dir. Greg Kohs. World Premiere. “THE THINKING GAME chronicles the extraordinary life of visionary scientist Demis Hassabis and his relentless quest to solve the enigma of artificial general intelligence.”

REUNIONS & RETROSPECTIVES

ALPHAGO. Dir. Greg Kohs. “With simple rules but a near-infinite number of possible outcomes, the ancient Chinese board game Go has long been considered the holy grail of artificial intelligence. Director Greg Kohs's absorbing documentary chronicles Google's DeepMind team as it prepares to test the limits of its rapidly-evolving AI technology.”

Still from ALPHAGO. Courtesy of Tribeca Festival.

DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

HACKING HATE. Dir. Simon Klose. World Premiere. “Simon Klose’s kinetic and socially-pressing documentary follows award-winning Swedish journalist My Vingren as she goes undercover online as a white supremacist in order to expose a network of neo-Nazis and far-right organizations.”

SHELF LIFE. Dir. Ian Cheney. World Premiere. “Quirky and contemplative, this delectable documentary takes us on a surprising global odyssey into the world of cheese, drawing unexpected parallels between the aging of cheese and the human experience of growing old.”

Still from THE A-FRAME. Courtesy of Tribeca Festival.

QUAD GODS. Dir. Jess Jacklin. World Premiere. “As the world’s first all quadriplegic esports gaming team, the Quad Gods are fierce competitors in this captivating story that challenges assumptions about disability, and spotlights the restorative power of resilience, passion and found community”

MIDNIGHT

THE A-FRAME. Dir. Calvin Reeder. World Premiere. “A quantum physicist's machine opens a portal to a subatomic universe, accidentally discovering a radical cancer treatment. As human trials begin, the stakes rise in this Cronenbergian sci-fi comedy.”

SHORTS

CATHARSIS. Dir. Brian Logvinsky. World Premiere. “A dancer savant with serious anger issues is about to sabotage his life when a strange psychotherapist brings him to face the shadows of his subconscious mind.”

COMPLICATIONS. Dir. Ivar Aase. New York Premiere. “A cam session turns into a life-and-death situation for Lotte – a webcam dominatrix.”

LUKI AND THE LIGHTS. Dir. Toby Cochran. “LUKI, a charming and upbeat robot known for living life to the fullest, is diagnosed with the life-altering disease ALS. He must choose how to face life going forward.”

• Director Interview: Ian Cheney on New Release THE ARC OF OBLIVION
• Science Films at Tribeca Film Festival 2023
• Nuclear Feelings: Irene Lusztig on RICHLAND

Science & Film: What was your initial interest in the neuroscience of film editing?

Chad Freidrichs: I used to teach filmmaking as Stephens College in Missouri, and I used to teach editing, amongst many other classes. While researching for that class, I came across a bunch of research by people like Walter Murch, and other people associated with cognitive film theory, about these ideas that come up in the film. I incorporated those into my class. I did that lecture so many times. It was called the Continuity Lecture, I talked about the importance of continuity editing, the way it's set up, why films are done the way they are. The reason why I talked about it so much is because it is so essential to the production of television and film, especially fiction television and film that we have today. And so, it raises the question always, why do we have we have? Basically, in the 1910s this system was established, why hasn't it changed? You look at all the other art forms that have evolved since the 1910s, they change quite a bit, but films look pretty much like they did in the 1910s in terms of editing. Now, we have other kinds of things that we've added, jump cuts, all kinds of other cool effects, but the basic grammar of film hasn't changed. And that intrigued me back when I was teaching at Stephens, and that question is still captivating me to this day. I had this idea that I would somehow, sometime like to make a film on that subject. After THE EXPERIMENTAL CITY, I was casting around for ideas, and that idea came up. So, I started researching for about a year the psychology of cinema.

S&F: Can you tell me more about cognitive film theory?

CF: David Bordwell is associated with the start of it. Around the early part of the 2000s, you started to see more and more psychologists and neuroscientists approaching film as a scientific endeavor. And so that's where you start to see these scientists who we portray in the film develop their ideas and their experiments.

S&F: And David Bordwell just passed away.

CF: I feel very fortunate to have met the man. He was the most pleasant, wonderful person. Just so kind, thoughtful. We did an incredible interview; he gave me like three and a half hours in his 70s. His work that really inspired me was a book Post-Theory where he and another editor had a series of essays. Post-Theory really kind of took on that idea that we can approach films empirically and approach them almost as a scientist would. That really resonated with me, I read that when I was in undergrad. Man, I loved David Bordwell. That guy was so cool. His approach is so broad. He wanted to promote the historical perspective, but he also looks at it from a what might be called a cognitive perspective. And I think those two were linked with him. He viewed the history as emerging, at least in part, not in a determined fashion, but something that was certainly influenced by the psychology of human beings looking at other human beings. Just in the basic idea of eyeline match in film, just like somebody look off screen, we're curious about what that person is looking at.

S&F: There's some talk particularly from the researcher working in Turkey who you portray in the film about the ways in which early cinema was playing with these techniques related to editing. Are there particular films where you feel like filmmakers were working out these techniques and how and why they work?

CF: Georges Méliès’s films are a great example of the illusion of action. That was a very, very early instance of action, the importance of action being recognized. If you look at his earliest films, he didn't have action, he just had cuts. There would be a blanket put over a woman and then a cut without much of an action at all, and you could see the jump. But as he evolved in his style, you start to see more and more action and the cuts become more and more invisible.

It wasn't until about the 1910s that all of these various techniques, maybe like six or seven of them, combined into a system. Bordwell and others talk about how that comes out of the Hollywood system. That's language we have today. That is our basic cinematic grammar, right there.

S&F: What I got from your film is that one of the reasons why that hasn't changed is because somehow, intuitively or not, that style corresponds to the way that our brains perceive the world.

CF: I think so. That's the argument coming from these scientists. There are practical reasons why filmmakers adopt these techniques too: it's very predictable–you can kind of go shoot a scene in a certain way, break it down a certain way, and know that you're gonna have some options when you come back to the editing room. But the question is, why does it cut together smoothly? What does that mean, cut together smoothly? And that's where it ties into this idea of having a foothold in our basic psychology.

S&F: It's really interesting to think about something filmmaking that was developed before people were studying the brain in the way they are today, and how it might be studied now to sort of reverse engineer an understanding of human perception.

CF: Yeah, I think that's a really good way of putting it. What you have is filmmakers who are working intuitively. That's how I work most of the time, I don't have kind of set rules about how I work, I just kind of try a bunch of different options, and then see which ones work, after a while show it to other people, see how I feel about it, see how they feel about it. I think most artists work on an intuitive level. And then eventually, if you scale that up to hundreds or thousands of artists, there's going to be some commonalities there. And there are sometimes very compelling reasons as to why things work, so that's where the scientists come in. They're trying to give a grounding for why those things work.

I think what's interesting about Murch, in particular, is that he made that prediction that there would be a blink synchrony between people watching a film if they're interested, if they're engaged with the film, and that's precisely the result that research came up with. He's working intuitively as an artist, but he's also thinking like a scientist. He has a very analytical mind. He was able to in a way reverse engineer it, where he approached it as an artist, looked at his own response, looked at others', and then came to the conclusion that blinking is reflective of the way that these people are thinking. That's really incredible. That was one of the greatest intellectual breakthroughs in film, how he came to that on his own.

S&F: How did making a film about this subject matter influence the way that you wanted to make this film?

CF: I wanted it to be well edited! When editing this film, I was always aware that hopefully there would be other filmmakers watching this, and they're going to be looking at the editing. But ultimately, and Murch talks about this and others as well, ultimately the story lets people in and they forget about the editing; it becomes invisible if it's well done.

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• The Experimental City: Director Chad Freidrichs
• Director Interview: Liza Mandelup on CATERPILLAR
• Science and Technology’s Grand Promises

TAMARACK by Elle Thoni (Series)
When plans for the U.S.’s first “green nickel” mine threaten the heart of Minnesota’s wild rice, a returning chemist and a rebellious hydrologist must come together to protect the Northland and steer the course of America’s Clean Energy Revolution — despite their own undeniable chemistry.

THE THALLIUM MURDERS by Katie Kirk (Feature)
After a multiple-murder case rocks Depression-era New York City, it’s up to forensic toxicologist Dr. Alexander Gettler to find the cause of the deaths. Based on a true story, THE THALLIUM MURDERS stylistically dramatizes Gettler’s quest to discover scientific truth and exonerate an innocent man.

FOR SUCH A TIME by Gretchen Suárez-Peña (Feature)
In this coming-of-age story, Luz, a Latin Pentecostal preacher’s kid, earns the opportunity to research the Miyake Event, suspected to be a solar flare event that can fry all technological infrastructure. She must risk her parents’ rejection in order to become the forward-looking scientist she was meant to be.

• 2023 Sloan Student Prize Winners Celebrated at MoMI
• Sloan Student Prizewinning Script Readings at First Look 2024
• Winners of the 2023 Sloan Student Prizes Announced

Science & Film: Can you tell me a little bit about LA FORZA?

Justine Beed: LA FORZA is an anachronistic romantic comedy about an 18th century scientist, Laura Bassi, who became the first female professor in the world to receive her doctorate. It’s also about her husband, who was her assistant throughout the process. It’s a fun historical comedy.

S&F: Laura Bassi being a real figure, can you tell me how you came to discover her?

JB: I’d been researching different scientists and female firsts, because I love feminist history. A lot has been left out of the history books. Funnily enough, around this time, Laura popped up as Google Doodle! I clicked through to a little blurb about her history.

S&F: What about Laura Bassi’s story made it the one you wanted to tell, rather than the other female firsts you’d researched?

JB: I’ve always found university settings to be full of full of fun, satire, and things to draw upon. They're little microcosms of society and bureaucracy that are fun to play with, and the fact that as a woman she began teaching in the early 18th century… I had to see how she was able to pull it off.

It’s also the romance. I grew up on BBC miniseries, so I’ve always wanted to write one. When I read more about her husband, Giuseppe Veratti, and the fact that they were colleagues and partners in science and love, that did it for me. It was a marriage of convenience at the start, but it turned into something deeply loving. They truly found love, with one another and in figuring out the unknown together. That’s what drew me in, for sure.

S&F: ‘Figuring out the unknown’ is a great way into the show. Considering the period, I’d imagine Italy during this time to be very religious, with ideas around science not being what they are today.

JB: Yes, I was really interested in the fact that not only were Laura and Giuseppe enmeshed in science, but they were also deeply spiritual. I love the fact that religion and science were so tied together during this period. In fact, the Pope was Laura’s patron. I found that so strange and wonderful. In a lot of ways, Laura also championed the transition from Cartesian philosophies toward Newtonian physics among her colleagues and at the University of Bologna. She was at the forefront of wanting to not only communicate with her colleagues within Italy, but to find new ones abroad. There’s a lot of correspondence between scientists in Europe and the US from this period that ties back to her. It’s probably why so many people like me have been inspired by her. . . It’s a relief because a lot of her work was destroyed when Napoleon invaded Italy.

S&F: Napoleonic pettiness! Can you say more about that shift from Cartesian to Newtonian physics?

JB: Mostly, it’s changed the idea of force from being something so tethered to materials toward the concept of gravity, this invisible force. I think this is what scared off a lot of people. Many felt it threatened the idea of God.

S&F: You’ve won multiple Sloan grants, which entail the support of a science advisor. How did working with your advisor impact your development of the script? Were there any lightbulb moments?

JB: I first met with Dr. Rosa di Felice from USC, she was so open and receptive to working together. It wasn’t just that she was a physicist. She’s Italian and her husband is a physicist too. They both teach at the same university, which is a very similar partnership to Laura Bassi and her husband. I found myself going back to the social dynamics of what it’s like to be in a romantic and professional relationship with somebody, in addition to the physics components.

She had a great point about how the sciences benchmark against prior knowledge. She would reference Benjamin Franklin and later Alessandro Volta. I enjoyed pulling at that thread, of how science is building on itself through and across a community of scientists. I loved tracking that progress with Rosa too.

S&F: An intellectual lineage, you might say. I’m curious about the creative lineage of the show you envision. Are there particular TV shows or artists that inspire you, or that you see as a touchstone for LA FORZA?

JB: Certainly Julian Fellowes and Merchant Ivory. There’s a lot coming out recently I’ve been pulling from too. In particular, LIDIA POËT, which is an Italian TV series about the first female lawyer. It’s very similar [to LA FORZA] in tone and in terms of following this charismatic lead who gets herself into trouble by pushing the boundaries. A mentor of mine recently referenced THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT, which has darker themes, but as LA FORZA starts to take shape, I’ve realized the two have more and more in common. I find these genre pieces so comforting, so I hope that LA FORZA ends up being a comfort to people.

S&F: We’ve spoken about the science advisor component, but given that you’ve won multiple Sloan grants, is there anything else you’d like to add about their impact on you and your work?

JB: It’s life changing, in a way that I couldn’t even have fathomed. I’ve been writing for a while, and seeking a thumbs-up of some kind, a sign to keep going. These grants are very much that sign, but it’s also Sloan specifically.

I have a brief story to tell: When I was an undergraduate in 2014, our film society received funding to go to the Sundance Film Festival. One of the films I saw was I, ORIGINS. It blended science and spirituality, and it was very experimental but truly struck me. To have this crazy opportunity to attend the festival at all, let alone see this incredible film was amazing. Then, I saw the Sloan logo pop up in the credits. I became very interested in the fact that Sloan had funded this sincere investigation into questions of the unknown through science and spirituality, also the fact that Mike Hill, along with Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling were part of this Sloan network. Now I feel so connected to their work in a lot of ways. Being a small part of this community is very special, and I’m so grateful.

♦

• 2023 Sloan Student Prize Winners Celebrated at MoMI
• Sloan Student Prizewinning Script Readings at First Look 2024
• Winners of the 2023 Sloan Student Prizes Announced

Earlier this month, recipients of Sloan film grants were welcomed to the second Sloan Virtual Film Summit. Following remarks from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Vice President and Program Director Doron Weber and Museum of the Moving Image’s Curator of Science and Technology Sonia Epstein, attendees heard from Athena Film Festival, the Black List, Film Independent, SFFILM, Sundance Institute, and Toronto International Film Festival about upcoming grant opportunities before hearing from one another.

Each year, the Summit includes a filmmaker spotlight, celebrating the talent and determination of a grantee who has harnessed Sloan’s pipeline of support from development to distribution. This year, attendees heard from Nicholas Ma, whose film MABEL earned two Sloan grants back-to-back in 2019 and 2020 before going on to make its world premiere at SFFILM in April 2024. Starring Lexi Perkel and Judy Greer, the film tells the story of a bright young girl named Callie (Perkel) whose best friend is a plant named Mabel. The friendship leads Callie’s teacher (Greer) to inspire a love of botany in her student, which buoys Callie through adolescence.

Speaking about seeing his work come to fruition after the COVID-19 pandemic ground things to a halt, Ma said “It's remarkable. . . we were at the Film Independent Screenwriters Lab in January of 2020 and planning to shoot that summer. Then everything fell apart, but the one thing that didn't fall apart was the support from Sloan. It allowed us to get back on our feet and make this film.”

Even before hearing from his fellow grantees, Ma expressed a sentiment that would recur throughout the evening: gratitude for not only Sloan’s support financially, but the emotional support these grants can inspire.

“We all need these boosts, as artists, to keep going,” Ma remarked. ”Yes, we all need financial boosts all the time, but we need emotional boosts as well. That's where Eric Brenner came in as my [science] advisor. . . the enthusiasm he brought to the table meant there was always an infusion of energy into the project.”

After hearing from Ma, nearly 30 filmmakers elected to share news of their projects’ progress, from talent attachments to festival premieres. Watch this space for more details on these inspiring developments as they move from confidential to public information.

• Revisiting Science on Screen with Isabella Rossellini
• Sloan Films at SFFILM 2024
• Sloan Grantee Gillian Weeks on the Reality of Screenwriting

Winners of the Columbia University 2024 Sloan Production Grants:

CITRUS GREEN. Dir. María Cristina Morales. Prod. Fernando Morett Garza. (Short Film)
A young woman in rural Puerto Rico struggles to choose between pursuing her dream of becoming an agricultural scientist or leaving her father and heritage behind.

STRANDED. Dir. Raina Yang. Prod. Amie Song. (Short Film)
A Chinese marine biologist arrives in a remote fishing village to save a repeatedly stranded humpback whale, only to be swept into resurfacing childhood memories of the home she left behind.

Winners of the Columbia University 2024 Sloan Screenwriting Grants:

ERUPTION by Katla Sólnes (Feature)
In the untamed highlands of Iceland in 1972, Elín, the dutiful wife of renowned geologist Dr. Kári Karlsson, is in for a surprise when their student helper arrives. She’s a woman, Jane, and lied on her resume about her gender. This arrival threatens to rupture Elín’s marriage and as passion smolders beneath the shadow of volcanic rumblings, Elín grapples with desire, duty, and the seismic shifts of her heart in this primal, feminist odyssey.

MUTE EVIDENCE by Cece Wheeler (Feature)
In 1979, FBI Special Agent James Rolland investigates reports of mysterious cattle deaths on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation in northern New Mexico. As Rolland becomes increasingly embroiled in local UFO conspiracies, he enlists the help of veterinary pathologist Dr. Julie Prine. Together, they uncover a more sinister truth: a government cover-up of a massive environmental disaster.

SALTON SEA by Derin Çelik (Series)
Defne, a material scientist from Turkey from a humble background, must survive among a group of corrupt, self-involved scientists. The future of the world energy crisis depends on it.

• Sloan Student Prizewinning Script Readings at First Look 2024
• Sloan Films at SFFILM 2024
• 2024 Sloan Sundance Winners Announced

Science & Film: The film starts with a really beautiful shot of the tree canopy overhead, which is also how it ends, and I was wondering how you worked with your DP and if there were any specific techniques that you thought about in terms of bringing to life the landscape?

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi: Of course, with all of my films, my relationship with my DP is very, very important. But with this project in particular, because of the nature of the project, I actually had my DP be involved even before the script writing. So we looked around the area to see what kind of shots and framing were possible in the area. And that was because ultimately, the goal of this project was to create visuals for Eiko Ishibashi's live performance. So, we went about seeing the same things together and sort of did like a trial and error with the camera to see what might be possible in these landscapes. That's how we came to the tree shots that you were speaking about. How we shot that was we had the camera set up on top of a small pickup truck in Japan, and then we had the car move. But then we also put on a slow-motion effect to it as well. I think that resulted in sort of a gliding feeling to the image. And rather than making the trees feel more lively, per se, I think it makes you more able to interpret the images in an abstract manner, almost as if we're watching a moving painting of some sorts—or that's how I feel the effect is. That resulted in this very particular and important shot in the film.

Still from EVIL DOES NOT EXIST.

S&F: The film has been referred to as sort of an eco thriller or eco horror and I wonder what you think of that term or categorization?

RH: So when I hear the word eco thriller, I don't quite feel like eco thriller is really what I think about the film. When I hear thriller, that makes more sense to me. It's not that I wasn't thinking about ecological things at all, but I don't think it was my intention to make something that's initially called an eco thriller. That said, I think when you capture nature, as is, I think just inherently there is a fear that can be birthed there because ultimately, in comparison to urban environments, I think there are a lot of things that have been controlled and organized in a way where each day could be similar to the next. But when you live in a place with abundant nature, most things are not convenient for people—things aren't built to be convenient for people. So, if somebody is compelled to do something one day, it's not that they can necessarily make that possible immediately.

When you spend a lot of time within these natural landscapes, there is always going to be a possibility of death from the fact that you're there for a long time. For example, just seeing a girl amongst a wintry natural landscape does instill some kind of fear where you wonder whether she's going to be okay. And so simply put, I do think if you just capture nature as is, without hiding those facts, then I think you just naturally end up with something that perhaps you could call an eco-thriller of sorts.

S&F: What you're saying about the contrast between the controlled urban environment and the kind of unwieldy landscape is very much a part of the narrative that you build where the glamping company wants to come in and build this controlled environment, and then they hear about all the ways that it might impact the environment. So I just wanted to ask about that plot and where that came from for you?

RH: All of these things, specifically regarding the town hall meeting about glamping, all the details I discovered through research. Barely anything in there is something that I just thought up. In fact, where we shot there was a very similar incident of a town hall meeting that happened with the locals, with an urban company coming in wanting to start a glamping site. And through the company answering questions from the locals, how sloppy their plans were really started to reveal themselves and those answers started to self-destruct the plans.

When I first heard about this incident, it really made me think that something like this could happen, where urban ideas come along without quite understanding the locale or the land or the places that they're coming into. But I think these things happen quite often where plans are made, and they're kind of pushed forward without actually having a real understanding [of place].

Still from EVIL DOES NOT EXIST.

S&F: The investors in the glamping site are the ones pushing the plans forward in your film, whereas the landscape doesn't have the same kind of voice, or force, except for perhaps in the end. I'm wondering what you think about that.

RH: You talked about forces and this idea of investors and how money is used as a force to propel certain ideas and movements and actions. Whether the power or the forces of nature and the forces of money, whether those two things are different and very separate is a question to me because I do think that we live in a world where many kinds of forces are existing all over the place, and different forces come together to result in unexpected things and unexpected situations. I think power of money, or power of civilization, or natural powers and forces, those things I don't find to be separable from each other. I do ultimately think that humans are part of nature too. It just so happens that with this film and this story, almost out of necessity, the kinds of powers that gathered led to this particular result. That, to me, is the worldview that I have within this film.

♦

• Director Interview: Mahalia Belo on THE END WE START FROM
• Foregrounding Nature: Bas Devos on HERE
• Big Love for the Forest: Virpi Suutari on ONCE UPON A TIME IN A FOREST

The absurdist yet tender Bleecker Street release follows a year in the life of a Sasquatch family, played by Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg, Nathan Zellner, and Christophe Zajac-Denek in prosthetic bodysuits to captivating effect...and not only to human audiences. In April, Eisenberg and the Zellners screened the film for a community of bonobos at the Ape Initiative in Des Moines, Iowa. We spoke to Ape Director President and Director Dr. Jared Taglialatela about his work at the Ape Initiative, the importance of conservation, behavior among bonobos in the wild, and the cinematic tastes of bonobos under their care.

Science & Film: Could you start by telling me about your research and the work of the Ape Initiative?

Jared Taglialatela: Ape Initiative is the only bonobo research center in the world. We are home to seven bonobos, and we work with researchers and scientists across the globe to study bonobo behavior. We use that information to inspire people to care about this species and promote their conservation in the wild.

S&F: How did your bonobos arrive in Des Moines, Iowa? They’re native to Central Africa, is that right?

JT: Yes, they are only naturally found in the Democratic Republic of Congo in a small section of the Congo Basin. All the bonobos we have were born in the United States under human care. None of them were taken from the wild. They used to [take animals from the wild] often for endangered species into the 1980s, even into the 1990s, but that has since been outlawed.

S&F: Can you tell me more about your enrichment program for the bonobos? How does screening SASQUATCH SUNSET fit within it?

JT: I always tell people bonobos are as smart as we are, for the same reasons we are: their natural ecology. They spend time in a forest in large social groups, mostly foraging for food. Bonobos are famous for extractive foraging, or getting at unavailable foods. That means remembering locations for foods, or figuring out they need to use a stone or stick to get something they otherwise couldn't reach.

In terms of caring for those animals in captivity, we try to emulate as much of what their experience would be in the natural world by keeping both their hands and their minds active throughout the day. Sometimes that involves puzzles or computer tasks. They all readily use a touch-screen computer. Other times, it involves things that are less interactive and more for their enjoyment, like watching movies.

S&F: What types of movies do they watch? Do they each have distinctive tastes?

JT: They definitely do. We have a number of ways the bonobos can choose to watch videos. There’s a big touch-screen computer they can sit at, as you see in the Sasquatch Sunset video. Teco will scroll on Netflix to pick his own shows or movies that way. He taps the icon much like you would use your remote. Teco is our youngest bonobo, and he has similar taste to a young child. He loves FROZEN and MOANA, all things animated. Though he's been very into IS IT CAKE? lately. It’s a Netflix show where they display five different items appearing as the same object out. You vote which one you think is cake, and they cut into them to see which it is. He loves the reveal.

S&F: Too funny!

JT: Elikya, one of our females, loves iPhone videos. She'll come point at your cell phone, then wait for you to get it out to show her videos. Kanzi, our oldest, is very big into action movies. He really likes CATWOMAN. NACHO LIBRE is another one [he likes], he likes physical comedy. Nyota is kind of a more of a sensitive guy. He really likes TWILIGHT, anything with Kristen Stewart in it. He's also very interested in musicals. I think he likes emotional pieces.

Not all the bonobos like watching things up close to the screen. Some of them build a blanket nest and like to watch from a cozy spot wherever they see fit.

S&F: Very relatable. Do they have their own Netflix profiles? I'd think that algorithmic data would be interesting.

JT: You’re absolutely right.

S&F: Netflix, this is your call to action. Have you shown them any of the PLANET OF THE APES films?

JT: That’s a good question. I feel like Kanzi would like the original, but we try to steer away from violence. No monsters. Even SHREK is sometimes too scary for Teco, which shows how much bonobos relate to what’s on the screen.

S&F: To that point, can you tell me a little bit more about how bonobos communicate? I imagine that those in your care and those in the wild may have different communication strategies.

JT: One of the unique things about some of the bonobos that live here is they can use these symbols called lexigrams to communicate with their human caregivers. You can ask them what they’d like to eat in English, and they can point to grapes or celery. Or they can ask to play chase with you.

One of the important parts for our staff to consider is that not all the bonobos have that language tool, and we must understand how the bonobos naturally communicate their preferences or needs. They have complex vocalizations and make a lot of different facial expressions. Those individuals that use lexigrams sometimes integrate those gestures and vocalizations, and they even can combine symbols into complex multi-source signals as well.

For now, most have very high-pitched squeaky vocalizations. I can’t even make a noise that high. The fundamental frequency of my voice is probably like 120 Hertz, and for a bonobo, it’s like a tenfold increase. Given they’re native to a very dense foliage environment, it could be that high frequency helps them localize each other more easily, but that’s only a theory so far.

S&F: I’ve heard bonobos characterized as humans’ closest living relatives. Is that defined by shared behaviors like those you’ve illustrated or genetic data?

JT: From a phylogenetic perspective, bonobos and chimpanzees are humans' closest living relatives. The cool thing is we are also their closest living relatives. Humans, bonobos, and chimpanzees are more closely related to each other than any of us are to any other animals including gorillas and orangutans. From a strictly genetic standpoint, they're both our closest relatives. From a behavioral adaptation standpoint, there have been arguments that bonobos represent a closer version of the ancestral human because being restricted to one part of Central Africa, there haven’t been specializations for new or competitive environments. Bonobos don’t live sympathetically with other apes, whereas chimpanzees do in some cases.

S&F: You’ve remarked that the filmmakers ‘nailed a lot of the stuff’ in SASQUATCH SUNSET. Can you elaborate on what aspects of the film rang true to you?

JT: Yes, a lot of the quiet moments in SASQUATCH SUNSET are exactly the type of quiet moments we see the bonobos having where they're foraging. They may be eating separately, but then they come together and have intimate moments or caring moments of grooming. The film did a good job of [depicting] that. It felt like I was watching a documentary about Sasquatches, not what one would normally expect of a Hollywood film. I think the bonobos really enjoyed those scenes.

S&F: What else did you observe?

JT: [The Zellners] were also able to convey a hierarchy between the four Sasquatches which the bonobos were able to pick up on. At one point, when the alpha Sasquatch was walking forward with the family, Teco punched the screen. He didn't punch the screen at any other time, so it speaks to Nathan Zellner’s great acting that Teco read the Sasquatch’s behavior as dominant or aggressive.

Also, that there is no dialogue. Bonobos don't have what we would call human language, but they do a lot of things which sit atop human language, for lack of a better way to say it. The actors did a good job of communicating with gestures and body language. Think, if you were to take words away from humans for a long time, they'd resort to more fundamental communicative signals.

S&F: Have you shown the bonobos any silent era films? The expressive style of acting of early cinema comes to mind.

JT: I am not a silent film expert but yes, that exaggerated expression would be interesting to them. There’s one last communication thing I want to touch on because it was my favorite part of the film.

S&F: Please do.

JT: The Sasquatches do something in the movie where they’re knocking on trees and waiting for a response. I think that has a nice conservation message, calling to the forest to see who’s calling back and who can hear you. Bonobos are endangered and they make that type of broadcast call all the time.

The filmmakers hadn’t come to watch bonobos or interacted with the apes before, yet they had this haunting segment of calling for others and not hearing anyone call back... that was such a powerful conservation message. It’s a little heartbreaking, but that nod to extinction was so powerful.

S&F: Loneliness at the species level, that’s an emotional wallop. It’s the inverse of PLANET OF THE APES. ‘This is our planet but it’s not our planet.’

JT: I knew then that our missions intersected.

S&F: Anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

JT: Bonobos are the only great ape species that are matriarchal. I’ll exclude humans from that, though I think you could make an argument that humans are matriarchal too. I’m sure people would disagree with that. It’s female coalitions that determine the direction of the group, and that gives bonobos some interesting characteristics that you might not think of when considering great apes in the forest. I like to make sure that people understand that aspect.

I’ll expand to say one more thing: Bonobos are so much like us, but sometimes in trying to compare them to us, we lose the value of just how wonderfully unique they are as a species themselves. Yet, you look at one in the eye or you get it close enough to observe one’s behavior, and it’s impossible not to see something that reminds you of yourself. What we’re really trying to do is to get people to connect. Once you take that first step from human to all the other species, it opens a bridge. Maybe you look at your own backyard differently. Our impact can be much greater than any of us realize.

♦

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How did AGGR0 DR1FT start? Was thermal imaging part of the initial concept?

I still have the piece of paper with some things Harmony wrote on it, like “assassin.” It was a very mathematical thing—a lot of times Harmony approaches filmmaking and editing in a mathematical way, like, “I need a certain amount of time for this, a certain amount of time for that.” AGGR0 DR1FT is a name that came very late in the process. We were calling this BBX, and BBX was a formula of multiple scenes of this concept that he was creating about this assassin, and it was really not meant to be a film. It was this visual experimentation, maybe already thinking in terms of the exhibition that he [also] ended up doing.

That [process] lends itself to doing things in experimental and unpredictable ways because I couldn’t approach it from the standpoint of traditional VFX. I got involved because I’m very good friends with Harmony’s editor, Leo Scott, the person who edited TRASH HUMPERS,among other projects, and who was involved in AGGR0 DR1FT from the beginning. The idea to use thermal cameras happened very early in the process, but probably not before he had this little piece of paper with a formula.

Can you explain what kind of cameras capture thermal imaging?

These are extremely expensive thermal cameras. They’re not for use in entertainment at all. They are technical cameras for use with large construction or aerospace things. Their purpose is to detect things like a part that’s overheating in a rocket, or a leak of gas in a power plant. First of all, the format of the film is almost square, not cinematic like 1.85. And the sensor has a lot of damage and weirdness. We were using two cameras, and I can tell when they were using which, because the sensors literally have different damages in different parts of it. And compared to a professional cinema camera like an ARRI, these are in a completely different league when it comes to price!

When the images come back from a shoot, what do they look like and how do you work with them?

What the camera sees is a black-and-white image—where white is the hottest part of the image and black is the coldest. It was then all crafted together with Harmony, because you map colors into this black-and-white gradient. So it’s like, “Oh in this scene I want white to be pink, and as it goes toward cold, I want it to get greener and greener.” But the thermal wasn’t the only way we captured those scenes, because there’s a lot of detail that the thermal would never see. For example, thermal cannot see reflections, thermal cannot see like specific things like a detail in the eye, because it only sees the temperature of an object. So there are more layers. That includes the effects layers and the AI layers that we created to achieve the final look.

AGGR0 DRIFT looks different from “infra-red” sequences in other movies, which tend to look the same throughout. These color palettes are shifting from scene to scene, evolving, sprouting details. How were you working with color?

It’s 100% part of Harmony’s process to see what’s there [on screen] and make decisions. So the team was experimenting with several different color palettes and deciding what would be the most interesting one for each scene—always with the goal of being the most hypnotic possible. And sometimes the shifts introduce something dynamic to the film: just by shifting that color palette, you refresh the attention that you’re paying to the scene. And the camera is really interesting. It recalibrates sometimes. So if someone in the scene lights up a cigar, that causes the camera to shift the black-and-white a bit, and then we could decide: you can use just the raw output of the camera where it doesn’t shift, or we can embrace the almost auto exposure of the camera, which brings us closer to something like a lo-fi video camera. So it was all about deciding whether we wanted to embrace certain things or not. But the beautiful thing of working with Harmony is that it’s always possible to embrace the real nature of all the elements that we’re using.

Still from AGGR0 DR1FT. Courtesy of EDGLRD.

I think you can see that visual experimentation in Korine’s films like GUMMO and TRASH HUMPERS. Were there specific reference points for the palettes?

There wasn’t a thing that Harmony put in front of us as a reference. But there was this complete different vocabulary when it came to talking about color: it was really about paint. He loves color. Working with him day to day, I don’t dare show him things without color, like de-saturated things, because that’s immediately like a “no.” He approached this with a painter mentality, as if he was painting a canvas. We never spoke about color with a vocabulary of saturation, hue—it was never technical, it was always an artistic conversation.

How did you apply VFX to these images? Some additions are evident, like the demon wings on his rival, or Travis Scott’s lizard tongue, but I’m sure there are other things too.

Once we started getting some footage, we very quickly locked the edit so that I could really start this experimentation knowing that whatever I was working toward was actually in the film. Some things I conceptualized and showed to Harmony, like the wings, the demon, the mask—some of this work that is more traditional. Then I knew that if Harmony was down for those ideas, I could start tracking the footage, or rotoscoping things if I needed rotoscope. So I started with those larger and very unpredictable parts of the pipeline, because I didn’t know if I would be able to accurately track thermal [images when integrating VFX].

Would you sketch out concept images yourself?

Those concepts I did by hand. Probably nowadays I would have used some kind of AI thing, but at the time I used mostly like Photoshop and did some collages and some photobashing just to have an idea. And I had a very strong inner logic for why the guy has wings, why the guy has a mask, why the demon appeared. Because otherwise, it’s hard to approach a feature film and do effects.

Tell me about the logic!

First of all, Harmony never asked me what my logic was for any of that. Never! It was purely a visual reaction to the things I was showing. But what I have to say is that my favorite films are films that I don’t understand, because I love how my mind really works then and becomes occupied with interpreting it. Like Kubrick’s films. And one of the things that I did not like was this YouTube video where Kubrick is explaining some of 2001! [With AGGR0 DR1FT] I don’t think it’s worth describing the whole thing—just to keep it interesting. But my internal logic was more the dynamic between who the good guy was and [who] the bad guy was, and which symbols they could each have. One is more demonic, one, with the wings, is closer to something like an angel. It guided me because I had to be very resourceful with a small team. Which is why back then, like 2022, I did embrace some very, very new AI things that were starting to appear as a way of creating visuals that were very fresh.

How did you use AI to help generate imagery or effects?

There’s all the post work when it comes to what we just talked about the color, etc. But I wanted to touch as many scenes as possible with VFX. So, I was like, I’m going to use AI in a very visual way, just purely visually, aesthetically. It was early on—there was nothing commercially out. Nowadays there’s Midjourney and DALL-E or Sora. Back then, it was really uncharted territory. I assembled a team of AI engineers in Brazil. They were putting together scripts, protocols, like a security camera protocol that identifies faces together with one that estimates poses. So we would find a face and put something—what some people describe as tattoos, or robotic parts.

For example, the snake tongue. Harmony is never like, "Oh, please put a snake tongue on Travis Scott.” But he’s just like, “Oh, it would be funny, a snake tongue”—like very casually. Then I can experiment and show it to him. Or in this stripper scene, there are those sparklers coming from them. And by now I understand that’s part of his directing style is to inspire people with wild ideas but not force them to do it.

And the thermal thing just feels different. That kind of footage gets stored in your memory differently from normal footage. Leo was cutting this film and we would get to the next stage of the edit and almost forget what we’re looking at. And I think that affects the cut, that affects the way things come after each other. It just hits your brain differently.

The violent moments seem to hit differently, too. Were you adding blood imagery?

The blood was mostly added [in post], but there is quite an insane scene with a lot of blood that has a lot of practical [effects]. All the fights, I would say part of the reference and the intention was to be closer to video games. I think violence feels different in every medium. And in film there is a very traditional way that it’s done and the way it feels, and we were trying to move closer to video games.

GTA [GRAND THEFT AUTO] created a whole language—it’s a game, but it’s kind of cinematic. Playing GTA feels like watching a Harmony film because it’s this non-narrative thing. You’re like a wanderer, you know, just existing.

You’re partly in control, partly not.

Yeah. And we are working on a new film now called BABY INVASION that is even more connected to the language of video games. It’s shot all from first-person perspective. But I think AGGR0 DR1FT is more like the GTAs of the world—open-world and kind of world-building. And when it comes to anime, I mean, I have my absolute favorites. I love SAMURAI X and COWBOY BEBOP and things like that. My childhood is very connected to DRAGON BALL: it’s probably the ultimate thing that inspired me.

After AGGR0 DR1FT, EDGLRD went from this concept in Harmony’s mind to a company. Even though we’re always making Harmony Korine films, video games are really what we’re pushing towards, you know? We believe in it as a storytelling device that will push the language of film even further than film is now. And AGGR0 DR1FT and BABY INVASION are experimentations in this process of finding the language of entertainment from now on.

What game are you playing at the moment?

I was playing a lot of HELLDIVERS. It’s basically like a video game version of STARSHIP TROOPERS. A lot of us in the office were playing it. It’s a multiplayer game which is great. So we were even having very interesting work conversations discussing projects as we played HELLDIVERS. Not during work hours! And Harmony’s kid is here constantly playing FORTNITE. This connection with the youth is really important for him to understand what the youth is doing and seeing how they interact with streaming in general, like the fact that they watch Twitch streamers and not traditional series or films. We really try to pay attention to that when choosing our path.

Still from AGGR0 DR1FT. Courtesy of EDGLRD.

AGGR0 DR1FT also has a hip-hop vibe—the dancers on the boat feel like they’re from ’90s music videos.

Harmony follows everything that is happening in hip hop, and in horror films. He really pays attention because he thinks those are the spaces where creativity still exists. They are mainstream, but they are also allowed to be experimental. I think that’s why we get approached by a lot of hip hop artists to do music videos and campaigns. And I think hip hop and video game language actually have him as an inspiration in a lot of ways and then vice versa. I watch his films and I see the seed of so much of YouTube culture, and TikTok culture is in TRASH HUMPERS and SPRING BREAKERS and even GUMMO.

Ultimately AGGR0 DR1FT all comes back to this assassin character who’s ruminating about his longing and frustration. How do you work on character and keep that soul in it?

To me, character is everything. I think characters are what make things iconic, relevant, interesting. So with AGGR0 DR1FT, and I think with everything Harmony does, but with AGGR0 DR1FT particularly—I won’t speak for him—[but I think] there’s probably a biographical element. This idea of this character that is really good at something, but this thing can be disrupting to his life and to his family. And this idea that you’re really good at something, but you almost reject it. So my goal was to contribute not just to the film visually, but also to the crafting of this character.

I’ve been to the screenings where people react, people laugh, because the character feels video game-y, I think. He says things that are funny, like, “I’m the best assassin in the world. I’m the humble assassin.” And it’s these contradictory things that I fell in love with, because [Harmony] allows him to contradict himself in a way that I think film writers don’t. And he comes across as very human—he has a real human conflict in his life and a wife and kids. There’s complete internal chaos that manifests visually in the world and then within him and in the things he says.

♦

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Please note: This article contains some spoilers.

3 BODY PROBLEM is a sci-fi series on Netflix dealing in weighty, big ideas about alien life, and exploring the scenario of first contact with a decidedly unfriendly ET.

Chinese physicist Ye Wenjie (Rosalind Chao, Zine Tseng) is working at a top-secret military base, sending signals out into the universe in the hope of making first contact. She receives a bone chilling reply: “I am a pacifist of this world. It is the luck of your civilization that I am the first to receive your message. I am warning you: Do not answer! Do not answer! Do not answer!” Disillusioned with the conflicts raging on Earth, Ye replies anyway, setting in motion a series of events that might eventually destroy humanity and the whole planet.

Interestingly, humans have actually sent radio signals like this before both intentionally and unintentionally. Since the dawn of broadcasting around the turn of the 20th century, signals from our radios and televisions have been leaking out into the cosmos, creating a so-called “radio bubble” around Earth. These waves travel at the speed of light, meaning that an 85-year-old broadcast from World War II would have traveled about 85 light-years by now. There are thousands of stars located within that 85-light-year-wide bubble—thousands of stars that may have received our messages.

3 BODY PROBLEM. Image courtesy of Netflix.

There is a catch to this kind of signal transmission, though. These leaking radio waves are diffuse, and only become more diffuse as they spread out throughout the cosmos. Actually detecting them from 85 light-years away would be a significant challenge. An intentional, directed message, however, might have a better chance of being picked up. In 1973, the giant Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico sent the famous “Arecibo message” towards the globular cluster M83, conveying our system of counting numbers, the elements that make up our DNA, the dimensions of an average human, a description of our solar system, and more. Although the Arecibo message hasn’t reached its destination (and won’t for another 25,000 years or so), other messages from Earth have either reached their targets or will within the next decade.

Many of these messages were sent with a spirit of hope, imagining a STAR TREK-esque future where many species co-exist peacefully to explore the cosmos and further our understanding of the universe. 3 BODY PROBLEM looks at the other side of the coin: what if broadcasting our location puts a target on our backs, leading to our destruction? Some scientists levied the same criticism against communications like the Arecibo message at the time of their inception, worried that it is too risky to reach out first.

Nowadays, most of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is passive, with humanity simply listening in for signals from beyond the solar system. The detective in 3 BODY PROBLEM, Da Shi (played by Benedict Wong, of Marvel’s DOCTOR STRANGE fame), even cites a real example of a possible extraterrestrial communication: the “Wow!” signal, detected by a radio telescope in Ohio in 1977. This was a 72-second pulse of radio waves, thirty times stronger than the background radio noise from outer space and unlike anything we’ve seen from natural sources. Back in the day, data was printed out as a string of letters and numbers on sheets of paper, instead of being stored in digital memory. This particular signal stood out so much that observer Jerry Ehman famously circled a bit of data on the page with red ink and marked it with the word “Wow!” To date, this is the most tantalizing observation radio SETI projects have detected. It remains unexplained and hasn’t been spotted again. The show also mentions the real-life Green Bank Observatory, one of the world’s major radio telescopes located in the wilderness of West Virginia nestled in the U.S. National Radio Quiet Zone, which is a regular participant in SETI searches.

3 BODY PROBLEM. Image courtesy of Netflix.

In the 3 BODY PROBLEM, once it’s clear that aliens know about Earth and do not look at us in a positive light, the team of scientists start their problem solving, brainstorming ways to counter the threats of the aliens referred to as “Trisolarans.” The Trisolarans, whose home world is a planet with multiple suns, are the inspiration for the show’s name. The “three body problem” refers to the dynamics of their home system, a notoriously tricky problem in physics where the motions of the orbiting objects can become quite chaotic. Unlike many other natural phenomena that can be explained by simple equations—think Kepler’s laws, the ideal gas law, and anything else you may have encountered in high school science—the three body problem can’t be explained by one tidy line of math. Living around multiple stars would also present challenges, with much wackier weather than we can imagine. This climate mayhem, in fact, is what drives the Trisolarans to leave their home planet and take Earth for themselves.

In the show, one of humanity’s first solutions to the alien threat involves sending a probe to intercept the Trisolarans on their way to Earth. The aliens are nearly 400 light-years away, however, which is a nearly impassable distance for us to travel. In reality, our current fastest spacecraft, the Parker Solar Probe, is swinging around the sun at 394,736 miles per hour—and even that would take hundreds of thousands of years to cross 400 light-years. The sci-fi solution proposed by the show’s theoretical physicist character, Jin Cheng (Jess Hong), involves a light sail propelled by radiation, from nuclear bombs.

But, light sails are actually closer to science fact than you may think. The Breakthrough Starshot initiative, funded by private investors, aims to send a tiny probe to the nearest star system to Earth within about 20 years from launch (which they hope will happen in 2036), using one of these light sails. By pointing intense lasers at the light sail, researchers hope to accelerate the spacecraft up to a sizeable fraction of the speed of light (~1-2%), quite similar to Jin’s plan in the show—but instead of counteracting an alien enemy the real-life project plans to take photos of the planet Proxima Centauri b and beam them back to Earth.

3 BODY PROBLEM. Image courtesy of Netflix.

I personally like to think about the search for extraterrestrial life as a positive endeavor. Out of the many solutions to the Fermi Paradox, I prefer the idea that the only civilizations that make it to space-faring stages must be peaceful, a result of the compromise and collaboration necessary to survive their technological adolescence. There are many possibilities for what could be out there in the cosmos, however, and it’s worth considering them all. 3 BODY PROBLEM unfurls the darker side of things, and does so with consideration and detail, including features of real SETI experiments that pop up in the show and make it eerily realistic.

The 3 BODY PROBLEM is also an excellent reminder—especially as we face ethical challenges from technologies such as artificial intelligence and threats to our survival like climate change—that science can be used for both good and evil, and it’s up to us to choose what sort of player we’ll be in the cosmic community.

♦

• CONSTELLATION: Visualizing Quantum Superposition
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“Quantum mechanics is weird!” is likely the most uttered sentence in the halls of physics departments since the early 1900s. CONSTELLATION, the new series airing on Apple TV+ written by Peter Harness, brings this light-hearted remark on the non-intuitive nature of a scientific theory to its most terrifying implications. The show plays as a thriller bordering on horror, building up tension and setting up ever-imminent jump-scares. But these never happen: what is ghastly is not an evil presence lurking in the shadows, but rather the very nature of our world. Nonetheless, watching the series requires a good dose of scientific suspension of disbelief, as the writing plays fast and loose with some of the quantum physics it portrays.

The show starts with a bang. European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Jo Ericsson (Noomi Rapace) is dealing with the aftermath of a fatal accident aboard the International Space Station (ISS), which seemingly happens at the exact moment the Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL, a fictionalized version of a Jet Propulsion Laboratory experiment) is turned on. As Jo fends for her life on the ISS, she starts to have terrifying visions involving hallways, wardrobes, and her fellow astronaut Paul Lancaster (William Catlett), who did not survive the accident. After she returns to Earth, against all odds—with Paul’s body and the CAL—her sense of alienation from reality worsens. Was her car red or blue? Could she play the piano? Was she estranged from her husband, Magnus (James D'Arcy)? Why does her daughter, Alice (twins Rosie and Davina Coleman), seem like a different person? Roscosmos and ESA directors, Irina Lysenko (Barbara Sukowa) and Fredric Duverger (Julian Looman) have a simple answer: some astronauts experience “burnout” upon their return home, and medical treatment is necessary. Jo does not accept that her feelings and visions are only a mental health crisis. Her resolve to validate her intuition and her longing to be reunited with her real child are the main drivers of a complex plot, developing in a non-linear fashion both in time and across different possible realities.

William Catlett in CONSTELLATION. Courtesy of Apple TV+.

The scientific hinge of the narrative is the concept of quantum superposition. In quantum physics, particles may only be allowed to occupy certain discrete states–for instance, an electron orbiting the nucleus of an atom may do so only in specific ways. This is a direct consequence of the wave nature of matter and is not in itself particularly troubling; it is the same effect that constrains piano strings to play the one note to which they are tuned when they are struck. What makes quantum mechanics special is that particles can be prepared in a superposition of these discrete states, which means they can occupy multiple of them simultaneously. When this happens, an electron will be here and there at the same time, Schrodinger's cat will be both dead and alive, and the world will nonchalantly proceed in its endeavors as if all of these possibilities were true. That is, until an observer for whom the world cannot be in a superposition state (for example, a human being) decides to check what is going on. When such an observer performs a measurement, all possibilities collapse into a single state, and only then will the electron have to pick whether it is here or there, or will the cat know whether it is dead or alive. These effects are extremely counterintuitive and spooked the likes of Einstein himself.

The existence of two parallel, superimposed storylines is the main driver of the story in CONSTELLATION. As the episodes progress, viewers realize that the initial tale we have been shown is only one of two different ways in which the events are unfolding. Elsewhere, it was Jo who perished in space, and Paul the one who returned to his family. In one reality Irina is the head of Roscosmos, in the other she died in space and her body (the Valya), forever enshrined in her orbiting cosmonaut suit, caused the present-day accident. This duality is everywhere, with some characters being more aware of it than others. Alice shares Jo’s intuitive perception that they are not quite mother and daughter and will eventually manage to hold deeply moving conversations with her alter-ego, realizing that space travel has exchanged their mothers. Henry/Bud Caldera (Jonathan Banks) is the person whose understanding of these intricacies is most developed: in the reality where Jo is alive, Henry is the Nobel laureate from the Rocket Propulsion Laboratory (where “Rocket” is substituted for “Jet” for mysterious reasons to me) who built the CAL with ulterior personal purposes beyond pure scientific curiosity. We slowly come to realize that the astronaut-turned-physicist needs the machine to deal with the aftermath of his own body-swap experience after a tragic mission in space shared with an evil counterpart, Bud.

Jonathan Banks in CONSTELLATION. Courtesy of Apple TV+.

Once CONSTELLATION is viewed as an exercise in bringing the concept of superposition to its extreme, some of its storytelling becomes tantalizing. Its finale feels like a missed opportunity. The key to the first seven episodes is not that there exist two realities in which different things happened. Both of the scenarios that the series is portraying are indeed taking place, it is simply that no measurement has been made to decide which one is to be picked. This can be deeply terrifying for those whose very survival depends on a specific outcome of the coin flip. In particular, Episode 7 works almost as a short film providing viewers with a captivating and distressing experience of what it would be like to live in a superimposed reality. The wink to Schrodinger’s cat drives the point home even for those viewers less acquainted with quantum physics. Alice, who like her namesake goes through the looking glass and experiences her own duality, seems to accept that this is just nature and makes peace with her mother’s fate. Caldera won’t stop until it is all over. Up to this point, the series’ science-driven plot is crafted effectively so that viewers share the characters’ sense of estrangement. I was longing for Jo, Paul, and Irina to make the brave choice to perform the measurement, to open their own Schrodinger’s box and force themselves to be found either dead or alive. Instead, CONSTELLATION shied away from itself, neatly separating realities once again, falling into tropes, and ending in a baffling final scene in which Jo’s dead body in space comes back to life. Despite certain inaccuracies in the science depicted, especially with regard to the CAL, the series managed to remain consistent within its fictionalized use of quantum mechanical suggestions. This internal coherence seems to be lost as the series wraps up.

On the topic of scientific inaccuracies, I need to make a final remark on the CAL and the phase of matter it produces, the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). Bose-Einstein condensates are a phase of matter that emerges at ultracold temperatures, when quantum mechanics becomes relevant, and the wave nature of particles becomes predominant. They are not directly related to quantum superposition. Moreover, unlike what Henry claims, they can be realized on Earth without a problem. The first one was observed in 1995 between the mountains of Colorado. In the following 30 years, their properties, including counterintuitive behaviors like superfluidity and matter-wave interference, have been studied in tremendous detail. The reason why the CAL was designed is not because microgravity is necessary for the realization of BECs, but rather because it can provide a unique environment to observe condensate geometries unattainable on Earth, reach colder temperatures, and study gravity itself. The CAL’s research program is fascinating, but it definitely falls short of creating superpositions of different realities. I will admit that the use of Bose-Einstein condensates and of the CAL in the series puzzles me, as they are quite misrepresented, and they do not seem to be necessary to the plot as I understood it. Reimagining science for narrative reasons is completely understandable, but some of the choices made in CONSTELLATION felt gratuitous and did not seem crucial to advancing the plot.

• Peer Review: A MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD
• LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY Science Advisor Jessica Parr
• Peer Review: Frank Wilczek on OPPENHEIMER

Readers already acquainted with our coverage of the above films have plenty of premieres to look forward to, however. Among the eight world premieres and seven international premieres, two projects focused on teenagers’ relationship to technology intrigue: Anneke de Lind van Wijngaarden and Natalie Bruijns’s feature-length SWEETIES and Yourgo Artsitas’s new short TR(OL)L: NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK, TOTAL REQUEST LIVE AND THE CHAIN LETTER THAT CHANGED THE INTERNET.

FEATURE FILMS

THE CLICK TRAP. Dir Peter Porta. World Premiere. “How can pop-up ads used to sell shoes also undermine global democracy? Digital advertising no longer only markets products, but increasingly disinformation. Investigative journalists and online activists reveal the unsettling reach of an unregulated industry in this alarming tech-sposé.”

CYBORG GENERATION. Dir. Miguel Morillo Vega. North American Premiere. “An 18-year-old musician designs a cybernetic organ and illegally implants it into his own body, acquiring a new sense that purportedly allows him to perceive sounds coming from outer space while on the surface of the Earth.”

Still from THE CYBORG GENERATION. Courtesy of Hot Docs.

ENO. Dir. Gary Huswit. Canadian Premiere. “Visionary British musician and artist Brian Eno reveals his creative processes in this groundbreaking, generative documentary. Created using a generative software system, this documentary is different every time it’s shown.”

ETERNAL YOU. Dir. Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck. Canadian Premiere. “If you could talk to loved ones you’ve lost, would you? Should you? Driven by AI and Big Data, tech startups are racing to develop digital doppelgangers with the promise of immortality and raising questions around love, loss and memory.”

EVERY LITTLE THING. Dir Saily Aitken. Canadian Premiere. “Amid the glamour of Hollywood, a woman finds herself on a transformative journey as she nurtures wounded hummingbirds, unraveling a visually captivating and magical tale of love, fragility, healing, and the delicate beauty in tiny acts of greatness.”

THE FABULOUS GOLD HARVESTING MACHINE. Dir. Alfredo Pourailly De La Plaza. World Premiere. “After 40 years working in the mine at Tierra del Fuego, Toto doesn’t qualify for the social security that would allow him to retire. So his son Jorge attempts to build a gold harvesting machine to bring them a better future.”

FIRE TOWER. Dir. Tova Krentzman. World Premiere. “Gazing from one hundred feet above the boreal forest, FIRE TOWER draws us into the lookouts’ world: a critical line of defense in wildfire detection; inviting us to contemplate how solitude inspires a different connection with nature, community and our creativity.”

GRAND THEFT HAMLET. Dir. Pinny Grylls, Sam Crane. Canadian Premiere. “During the pandemic, two out-of-work British actors attempt the impossible: mounting a full-scale production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet inside Grand Theft Auto Online, resulting in a deeply personal story shot entirely within game’s ultra-violent virtual world.”

THE HERE NOW PROJECT. Dir. Greg Jacobs, Jon Siskel. World Premiere. “An international diary of the impact of climate change is constructed from thousands of hours of in-the-moment footage. Through the process, we witness the deep human resilience, resourcefulness and courage necessary to confront the world’s most pressing challenge.”

LOVE MACHINA. Dir. Pete Sillen. International Premiere. “Married over forty years, Martine and Bina Rothblatt commission Bina48, an ‘AI mindfile’ of Bina’s consciousness housed inside a robotic bust. Using cryopreservation, digital consciousness, xenotransplantation and space settlement, they prepare to extend their romance into infinity.”

NOCTURNES. Dir. Anupama Srinivasan, Anirban Dutta. Canadian Premiere. “Two researchers spend their nights deep within the Himalayas, methodically researching moths, finding an all-encompassing view of the connections we have with the nature that surrounds us.”

Still from NOCTURNES. Courtesy of Hot Docs.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE FOREST. Dir. Virpi Suutari. North American Premiere. “At 22, Ida becomes the leader of the new Forest Movement, coming face to face with Finnish forest industry giants and confronting generational bias. This modern fairy tale takes you into the heart of the woods and the center of the conflict.”

THE OUTPOST. Dir. Edoardo Morabito. North American Premiere. “After a lifetime of unsuccessful plans to save the Amazonian rainforest from wildfires, a Scottish eco-warrior concocts a surefire media stunt—stage a Pink Floyd concert from inside the burning bush. Is it madness, one man’s desperate dream or both?”

RISING UP AT NIGHT. Dir. Nelson Makengo. North American Premiere. “After an election in the Democratic Republic of the Congo shakes its political and economic stability, its capital, Kinshasa, remains in darkness. This immersive, cinematic depiction of life in spite of everything portrays a population reinventing itself in the face of uncertainty.”

SEEKING MAVIS BEACON. Dir. Jazmin Jones. International Premiere. “Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing taught millions globally how to type, but the software’s Haitian-born cover model vanished decades ago. Two detectives search for Beacon, revealing questions about identity and AI along the way.”

SINGING BACK THE BUFFALO. Dir. Tasha Hubbard. Canadian Premiere. “Travel with acclaimed Cree filmmaker Dr. Tasha Hubbard through the North American plains as Indigenous nations reintroduce the keystone species to the land and help reclaim territories and cultures that signal a turning point for longterm, collective survival.”

THE SPARKLE. Dir. Isabelle Grignon-Francke. Ontario Premiere. “Over a summer with a travelling carnival, Kim navigates the camaraderie of a close-knit crew while grappling with his desire to pursue his passion for geology, a journey marked by the layoff of his best friend Billy and his own dreams of elsewhere.”

THE BONES. Dir Jeremy Xido. Canadian Premiere. “THE BONES is the epic story of the international dinosaur bone trade. Following the journey of fossils from their discovery in remote corners of the earth to laboratories, museums, auction houses and collectors’ living rooms, the film weaves together interlocking stories of people caught between the demands of commerce and the basic human drive to unlock the most profound mysteries of life.”

SWEETIES. Dir. Anneke de Lind van Wijngaarden, Natalie Bruijns. International Premiere. “While on holiday at a French campsite, three young teenage girls face romance, family relations and online obsessions in this poignant look at coming of age in a digital world.”

WHATEVER IT TAKES. Dir. Jenny Carchman. Canadian Premiere. “When cyberstalking leads to a series of bizarre deliveries, including a bloody pig mask, a couple’s otherwise calm life is shaken. As the harassment intensifies, the FBI closes in on a Silicon Valley giant in a reveal you will never see coming.”

THE WHITE MOUNTAIN. Dir. Luke Wiles, Gwyn Williams. International Premiere. “High atop Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps, two individuals brave the deadly peaks and trails to pursue their personal conquests before the slopes melt away, confronting climate change and our role in its prevention.”

SHORT FILMS

ASBESTOS. Dir. Vanessa Gauvin-Brodeur. World Premiere. “A cinematic and introspective look at the residents of a Quebec town—once the site of the world’s largest asbestos mine—as they grapple with their community’s industrial past.”

CHASING TIME. Dir. Jeff Orlowski-Yang, Sarah Keo. World Premiere. “After bringing some of the first and most striking visual evidence of our changing planet to the fore through the groundbreaking study of melting glaciers, photographer James Balog returns to Iceland to close the last chapter of his life’s work.”

THE CONQUEST OF SPACE. Dir. Albin Biblom. International Premiere. “Some months before Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, chimpanzee Ham is blasted into the stratosphere, as seen through archival footage in this tragicomic look at the space program and the animals that ‘made it’ before humankind.”

THE EVERLASTING PEA. Dir. Su Rynard. World Premiere. “Through the eyes of a scientist questioning plant consciousness, a pea plant dreaming of its past in Rome’s Colosseum, and a botanist unravelling a mystery, THE EVERLASTING PEA invites a profound reimagining of our relationship with the vegetal world.”

J’ADORE VENISE – ON DISAPPEARING BODIES. Dir. Stefano Dealessandri. World Premiere. “Delving into the relationship between Venice as a place and the people who move through it, J’ADORE VENISE focuses on the phenomenon of disappearing bodies that result from both anthropogenic environmental degradation and the pervasive influence of surveillance capitalism.”

MEET ME AT THE CREEK. Dir. Loren Waters. International Premiere. “MEET ME AT THE CREEK tells a story of interconnectedness and Cherokee values through Jim’s lifelong fight to restore Tar Creek, which is officially recognized by the government as ‘irreversibly damaged,’a designation Jim refuses to accept.”

SANDCASTLES. Dir. Carin Jin-Yi Leong. International Premiere. “In Singapore, Michigan, erosion from mass deforestation caused sand dunes to shift and swallow the town whole, while its namesake in the East built land where there was once only water and marshland.”

TR(OL)L: NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK, TOTAL REQUEST LIVE AND THE CHAIN LETTER THAT CHANGED THE INTERNET. Dir. Yourgo Artsitas. International Premiere. “A chain letter to vote the music video for seminal boy band New Kids on the Block’s ‘Hangin’ Tough’ onto MTV’s TOTAL REQUEST LIVE makes the rounds over online message boards in 1999.”

• Reanimating the Dead: The Filmmakers of ETERNAL YOU
• Big Love for the Forest: Virpi Suutari on ONCE UPON A TIME IN A FOREST
• Mothlight: The Filmmakers of NOCTURNES

Among the selection’s 22 world premieres, we are particularly intrigued by Tobias Nölle’s PREPARATIONS FOR A MIRACLE, which festival programmers praise as “a political journey of reflection on the environment and technology.”

Fans of Gerard Ortín Castellví, whose AGRILOGISTICS screened at MoMI’s First Look Festival last year, will be pleased to see his new film BLISS POINT counted among the five international premieres below.

We also recommend Virpi Suutari’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN A FOREST, making its Swiss Premiere. Check out Nic Rapold’s interview with Suutari here.

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM COMPETITION

APPLE CIDER VINEGAR. Dir. Sofie Benoot. World Premiere. “What do a kidney stone, a volcano in Cape Verde and an English geologist have in common? . . . Somewhere between a nature documentary and philosophical fable, this puzzle-like film invites us to examine the link between the human body and the planet.”

FAR WEST. Dir. Pierre-François Sauter. World Premiere. “Angela and Jair trawl the volcanic coast . . . They must learn to coexist with the visiting big-game fishermen looking for blue marlin. In adeptly composed frames, Pierre-François Sauter shows the effects of coastal international tourism on Cape Verde.”

RISING UP AT NIGHT. Dir. Nelson Makengo. International Premiere. “As the Congo prepares to build Africa’s largest power station, the people of Kinshasa are engulfed in darkness. As the population struggles to receive access to electricity, they rely on makeshift lights. . .”

Still from RISING UP AT NIGHT. Courtesy of Visions du Réel.

THE LANDSCAPE AND THE FURY. Dir. Nicole Vögele. World Premiere. “Along the Bosnian-Croatian border near Velika Kladuša, the paths of mine disposal experts, migrating families and locals cross . . . A deeply telluric film, a kaleidoscope of landscapes haunted by the fury of past and present.”

WHERE THE TREES BEAR MEAT. Alexis Franco. World Premiere. “In the Argentine Pampas, life seems to be on hold. A prolonged drought is killing off the livestock and threatening the existence of Omar, a farmer. . . Alexis Franco confronts the harshness and fragility of a condition in this western in the age of the Anthropocene.”

BURNING LIGHTS COMPETITION

BILLY. Dir. Lawrence Côté-Collins. World Premiere. “Billy is diagnosed with schizophrenia. With the help of the filmmaker, his only remaining relationship apart from his family, his personal archives become an invaluable resource for understanding his illness. A formal deconstruction of schizophrenia through a remarkably open-minded gaze.”

CAMBIUM. Dir. Maddi Barber, Marina Lameiro. World Premiere. “In an attempt to reclaim pasture for their cattle, the inhabitants of an ecovillage in Navarre decide to cut down a pine grove planted as part of a state-funded reforesting initiative . . .”

Still from CAMBIUM. Courtesy of Visions du Réel.

PREPARATIONS FOR A MIRACLE. Dir. Tobias Nölle. World Premiere. “A friendly android travels back in time to our present day and observes its human customs. Its wanderings spark some delightful conversations with its fellow machines. In search of a king from whom to extract valuable data, its system runs up against repression . . .”

TAMINA – WILL THERE EVER BE WHAT USED TO BE? Dir. Beat Oswald, Lena Hatebur, Samuel Weniger. World Premiere. “Wolves are returning to the Swiss Alps, and Beat Oswald, in this co-directed project, is determined to see one. Arriving in the idyllic Tamina valley, his encounters with the inhabitants and tourists force him to start questioning our place in nature . . .”

THE DIARY OF A SKY. Dir. Lawrence Abu Hamdan. World Premiere. “In 2020, as the pandemic brings the world to a standstill and silence sets in, artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan sets out to document Beirut’s noise levels– which are increasing dramatically, particularly in the airspace. An investigation, in the form of an essayistic collage, on the militarization of the skies.”

NATIONAL COMPETITION

SAUVE QUI PEUT. Dir. Alexe Poukine. International Premiere. “At the hospital, the nursing staff appraise their methods through role-play with actors. The empathy required to tell a patient that they have cancer, or care for their loved ones, requires practice . . . Alexe Poukine probes the hospital milieu and the symptoms of a structural crisis.”

VALENTINA AND THE MUOSTERS. Dir. Francesca Scalisi. World Premiere. “Niscemi, Sicily. A landscape shaped by intensive farming, wildfires, and MUOS: imposing military antennae that disfigure the territory. . . A delicate tale of emancipation rooted in a ravaged yet beloved land.”

GRAND ANGLE

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE FOREST. Dir. Virpi Suutari. Swiss Premiere. “Ida, Minka, Ville, Otto and Eerik are just some of the young activists working to protect Finland’s forests. Through sensual images, we follow these heroines and heroes as they confront the giants of the forestry industry and share their moments of osmosis with nature . . .”

HIGHLIGHTS

GRAND THEFT HAMLET. Dir. Pinny Grylls, Sam Crane. Swiss Premiere. “As the UK enters another lockdown, the future is looking bleak for actors Sam and Mark. As they dive into Grand Theft Auto with their avatars, inspiration strikes: isn’t this the perfect 'setting’ for a play about revenge? . . .”

DOC ALLIANCE SELECTION

IRON BUTTERFLIES. Dir. Roman Liubyi. Swiss Premiere. “. . . In this investigation combining images taken from the Internet and court documents, the filmmaker shows how the Russian regime, denying any involvement in the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, unleashed a form of digital propaganda that has since been widely employed in the invasion war.”

SPECIAL SCREENINGS

AS THE TIDE COMES IN. Dir. Juan Palacios and Sofie Husum Johannesen. Swiss Premiere. “The 27 inhabitants of the marshy island of Mandø live separated from the mainland by tides, dreaded tourist visits and migrating birds. Among them is the farmer Gregers, on a quest to find a woman willing to live there with him . . .”

THE HUMAN SURGE 3. Dir. Eduardo Williams. “Different groups of friends wander the four corners of the world, trying to escape their depressing jobs. In the process, they explore new possibilities, while different dimensions seem to overlap. A constantly surprising visual trip shot entirely with a 360° camera . . .”

INTERNATIONAL MEDIUM LENGTH & SHORT FILM COMPETITION

A TERRIBLE BEAUTY. Dir. Iram Ghufran. World Premiere. “What makes a body human? This science-fiction fable shot in China foreshows the rise of AI. Time behaves fluidly as we travel into the near future in the company of an unusual pair: Blue and her friend, a mannequin named Lucy . . .”

BLISS POINT. Dir. Gerard Ortín Castellví. International Premiere. “Gerard Ortín Castellví concludes his trilogy on the food we eat . . . By delving into the gleaming workings of the distribution chain, Bliss Point elegantly eviscerates the well-oiled machinery of an industry for which nothing matters more than optimization – certainly not human beings.”

CYBORG GENERATION. Dir. Miguel Morilla Vega. World Premiere. “An encounter with several cyborg artists persuades 18-year-old Kai to acquire a new sense. He develops a cybernetic organ which allows him to hear cosmic rays from space as sounds. A tender and extraordinary transition then unfolds, a quest to be one’s best self, far from the standards of normativity.”

Still from CYBORG GENERATION. Courtesy of Visions du Réel.

DE GALLO QUI OVAVIT. Dir. Nina Forsman. International Premiere. “Which came first... the rooster or the egg? It’s a question that has perplexed the human mind since ancient times. On 4th August 1474, an egg-laying rooster was publicly executed on the town square in Basel. Nina Forsman takes this bizarre historical fact and uses it to create an arresting if slightly absurd investigation . . .”

GOING SOUTH. Dir. Alan Sahin. World Premiere. “April 2023, the Gotthard Road Tunnel. Glued to the asphalt at the entrance to the pride of Swiss engineering, climate activists are causing horrendous traffic jams on the holiday route to Italy . . . a social laboratory which wryly juxtaposes the climate emergency with our mundane everyday interactions.”

HYDROELECTRIC JOY. Dir. Alexander Markov. World Premiere. “Vadim Rudenko, a young hydraulic engineer and amateur filmmaker, is working on the construction of the Aswan Dam in Egypt, at the cost of his burgeoning relationship with Vera, who has stayed behind in the USSR . . .”

IN PRAISE OF DARKNESS. Dir. Adrián Balseca. World Premiere. “Deep in Ecuador’s Mullumica Valley, figures are busy extracting obsidian, an opaque volcanic rock. The rock then begins its metamorphosis, transported from the quarry to the pristine confines of a laboratory where it takes on its ultimate role – as a replacement for the director’s artificial eye . . .”

INTO THE MAGNETIC FIELDS. Dir. Sandra Schäfer. World Premiere. “Machines work the countryside, birds fly over the fields and robots imitate human movements. Ornithologists and cutting-edge robotics make for an unlikely yet fruitful encounter, as the artist Sandra Schäfer questions post-humanist modes of production. What will the relationship between nature and culture look like in the future?”

IT WILL BE BETTER BEFORE. Dir. Keto Kipiani. World Premiere. “In 2018, two filmmakers meet up at the Abastumani Astrophysical Observatory in the mountains of Georgia, in an effort to capture the beauty of the place . . . Could their shared fascination with the stars and this timeless place have concealed unexpressed romantic feelings?”

Still from IT WILL BE BETTER BEFORE. Courtesy of Visions du Réel.

JIZAI. Dir. Endo Maiko. World Premiere. “In a laboratory, a child is the object of a mysterious experiment. Aided by a robotic prosthesis – or is it the other way round? – the child receives sense data from our world: the sound of water, the feeling of the sun, courage, dreams. What does an AI need to feed on to push the limits of human abilities?”

THE ANALOGUE TRACKS. Dir. Florent Meng. World Premiere. “A crystal hunter finds a quartz crystal on the Mont Blanc massif. The mineral passes through the hands of geophysicists, acoustic engineers and gemmologists, exploring our potential for communication with the inanimate world . . .”

TIME SENSITIVE CHARACTERS. Dir. Coralie Hina Gourdon. World Premiere. “Online, sleep has become an art form. While a game creator attempts to teach the concept of time to his AI, online gamers fall asleep during seemingly never-ending quests, some livestream their own sleep, and AMSR artists create soundscapes for peaceful slumber. A fascinating observation of the world of cyber-sleep.”

TOMORROW, THE BURNING HEAVENS. Dir Max Bloching. World Premiere. “The Alps, 1560. A rare meteorological phenomenon causes the sky to ‘catch fire’. People fear the Apocalypse, which then manifests as a cold snap that dramatically affects the harvests. This narrative, interwoven with images depicting the technical management of the Alpine landscape, creates a fascinating dialogue between the ancestral apocalyptic imagination and the unfolding climate collapse.”

OPENING SCENES

512 X 512. Dir. Arthur Chopin. International Premiere. “Using images already available on the internet, text-to-image programs can sometimes create monsters. 512 × 512 explores the biases of Artificial Intelligence through the shocking images it can produce by synthesizing ‘the entire memory of the world’: high-tech nightmare visions that reveal what we have repressed.”

GENE:SIS. Dir. Kia Krebs. World Premiere. “Laboratory rats are born under neon lights, in endlessly stacked plastic trays. Here, the relationship between man and animal is ambivalent: tenderness comes gloved in latex, and the violence of experiments looms on the horizon. With remarkable framing and sound design, GENE:SIS takes us right into the animal’s point of view.”

• Big Love for the Forest: Virpi Suutari on ONCE UPON A TIME IN A FOREST
• Science on Screen at First Look 2024
• Science on Screen at First Look 2023

Science & Film: When you were writing this film, I'm sure that AI didn't have as big a place in the conversation as it does now. What was your thinking about it at the time?

Bertrand Bonello: It is true that when I started writing the film, like five or six years ago, I couldn't have imagined that the year the film will be shown, in Venice and Toronto, fall 2023, AI would be the center of so many worries, so many discussions—and if we talk about cinema, such a huge strike, and so many negotiations. I thought it would be like, in 10 years, not now. So of course, that makes the film much more contemporary. But one of the subjects of the film is the relationship between humanity and technology. It's true that it's something that fears me a lot.

The present of the film is 2044, so it's the future. I realized that when you make a science fiction film, because in a way, [THE BEAST] is also a science fiction film, inventing the future is a way of talking about your fear of the present. The relationship between humanity and technology is one of my fears. Technology is a tool, and human beings must be the master of the tool. If he's not, if the tool is the master of humanity, I think it's the beginning of the end. Even in the scenes in Los Angeles, which is set in 2014, you see Léa Seydoux very connected with her computer. You see George MacKay on his iPhone and stuff like that. But what do you see before you? You see two people who are very, very lonely. I think it's something very, very strong in today's world, loneliness. I have in 2014 a character that we can call an INCEL, and technology is part of this loneliness. And now with AI, of course, it's like three steps higher. There are some wonderful things to do with it, too, for research, for science, for medicine. But last year, we could see that the whole world was very scared, because it also has to go with some ethical, moral, political decisions and worries. And that's where you don't know where the limit is.

Léa Seydoux in THE BEAST. Courtesy of Janus Films.

S&F: Do you see do you see emotions as the thing that separates humans from machines, or is it intelligence? I'm thinking of the premise of THE BEAST in which human emotions are forbidden.

BB: We have to define what intelligence is, it's not the same for a lot of people. For a lot of people, having a lot of knowledge is a kind of intelligence, which it is not, it's just knowledge. No one can have as much knowledge as a machine now, you know. But, sensibility is something very human. Now, machines are not able to have sensibility, but they might be able to fake sensibility—reproduce our sensibility. For example, I started to play, like everyone, with chatGPT. I said, write me a script Bertrand Bonello would write. Five seconds after that, I had a script. Me, it takes me like five years. I don't say the script is good, but it's not stupid. There are a lot of ideas. Of course, I won't use that. But it's always a little freaky, you know, because we know that in three years it's going to be million times more powerful, and more powerful might be like, having more possibilities, even to introduce some poetry, even to introduce some weakness, because we're made of strength and weakness. Maybe machines will introduce weakness in their thinking,

S&F: You spoke about the feeling of loneliness in THE BEAST, especially when it comes to scenes of people with their devices. How did you work with your DP to evoke that feeling?

BB: It's a DP I've done so many films with, so we know each other very well, that's a good thing, because we go very quickly. Usually what we do is during the prep we send each other some ideas and a lot of images. In this precise case, you have three periods: 1910, 2014, and 2044. So, we tried to find something very specific for each. In 1910, we decided to shoot on 35mm, because we needed something very central for this love story. We wanted to really feel the skins and feel the clothes and feel the faces and 35mm was the only solution. Then, for 2014 and 2044, the sharpness and the coldness of digital was perfect. We decided to shoot the present of the film, 2044, in a square ratio, 1:3;3, as a way to say, there is no more space. The characters are very alone. And then when you go back to the past, you go back to a 1:8:5 ratio, something wider, like the past was a refuge. Like if the past was going to the movies. And then, of course, it becomes more precise with each scene, how to shoot a girl alone in a house facing the computer, how to make this interesting? How to do the fire scene, the underwater scene, small technical questions. But basically, one of the main questions was, how to make one film and not three with these very, very specific atmospheres.

S&F: In the scriptwriting process, did you consult with any scientists, or read any books that were particularly informative?

BB: Yes, I worked with a specialist in AI. That's why I was quite aware of the many dangers. But as I told you, I didn't know it [the technology] would [develop] so quickly. I don't want to say that technologies are the devil, you know, it's not like it was better before. It's just, it asks new questions, and basically, political questions. I mean, with a hammer, you can put a painting on the wall, but you can also kill someone—it depends what you do with the tool. And that's what is scary.

S&F: So, did you intend the film to be a sort of warning?

BB: I don't want to have any messages, you know? I prefer films that give questions, much more than films that give answers. And I think the film opens with many, many questions. Intimate and collective.

Léa Seydoux in THE BEAST. Courtesy of Janus Films.

S&F: I think that's something the sci-fi genre can be particularly good at—posing those provocative questions. What is your relationship to the genre?

BB: I don't have much relationship with science fiction. It's a big lack I have. I don't read much, I don't see many films. But when I was working on this film, I decided to go to science fiction because it allows you to invent concepts, and that's fantastic. Like in philosophy. I invented two concepts. The first one was that humanity has failed and AI has taken the power and solved all the problems, and there is a price to pay. And the other one, which is more about my main character, about Gabrielle, she has this horrible dilemma which is choosing between interesting work and emotions. When you have dilemmas for characters, it's very good to tell a story.

Usually in science fiction, you have two major tracks. One is the hyper technology stuff. The other one is post-apocalyptic. My future is like tomorrow, it's in 20 years. I took the world basically as it is, and I took away some stuff. There are no more cars, no more internet, no more commercials, no more relationships between people.

S&F: Why did you think of Léa for the role? Did you write Gabrielle thinking of her?

BB: Very quickly during the writing I was thinking about Léa, who I know quite well—she's been in two of my previous films, smaller parts. For me, she's the only French actress that can be in the three [time] periods. She's timeless, she's ageless, at the same time she's very modern, at the same she can be in any period. The second reason is, there is something very mysterious in her, even if she gives a lot in terms of emotion on the screen. Working with her, she's particular. She doesn't want to prepare herself, she doesn't want to discuss scenes before the shoot, as if talking or discussing could cut her off from her instincts. So, she arrived on the set not always knowing what we were going to do. She likes to discover the scene while she's shooting it. So, I'll just say the few words that would ring a bell, and it's her way to abandon herself.

S&F: Can you talk about the use of green screen?

BB: It was the first scene I wrote, the prologue, the green screen scene. I knew that I would not move it and that will be in the film at the end. For me, there are three reasons. The first one is that, for everyone in the world, green screen is related to virtuality. So, the audience knows that there is going to be some virtuality in the film. If you open with the 1910 scene, it looks like a period film. If you open with a green screen scene, you know it's going to be weirder than that. So that was the first reason. The second is, I don't know, maybe the scene is two or three minutes, and you have Léa alone in this green ocean totally lost. It's a way to say, the subject of my film, it could be love, it could be fear, but in a way, the subject of my film, it's her—her Gabrielle, and in a way, her, Léa. The third reason is that there is some fiction in this scene. There is a scream, and we talk about the beast and stuff like that, and when you go to the next scene, the one in 1910, which is a long, long, long party scene, you enter in the scene loaded with something.

♦

• Revisiting THE CONGRESS
• Peer Review: A MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD
• Joe Hunting on WE MET IN VIRTUAL REALITY

How did you choose Ida and Minka as the two eco-activists to focus on?

I met Minka when she was taking part in the Extinction Rebellion. I went to meet a group of people from Extinction Rebellion and they had formed a Forest Rebellion group, part of a bigger grassroots movement, The Forest Movement. I instantly saw that there was something interesting about Minka. And when we were pre-shooting something, I noticed she has almost a film star quality—a very beautiful, delicate presence and nuanced existence in front of the camera, and the right kind of rhythm. Ida caught my interest because she has this very interesting complexity in her personality. On the one hand, she’s like a child, [but like] a genius child whose parents forgot to pick her up in the kindergarten yard. But then the next moment she can be a very strategic thinker. She spreads her war maps in front of her and starts to command her troops!

I followed them for one and a half years, and we edited a few scenes for them to see, so they could get an idea of how I’m looking at them, and the atmosphere in the film. I think that was a very big part of gaining their trust.

Your film shows the beauty of the Finnish forests—not playing it up, but just reminding us how it looks and feels to be in a forest.

Yeah, it was very important for the film that it comes from the protagonists, not something superficially added. Ida spoke a lot about her deep love for the forest. It’s a very deep emotion, almost physical. And they spend a lot of time in nature as well. Ida doesn’t even need any mittens when it’s like minus 35 degrees! She has become like one of the creatures in the forest. So it was very evident that we need these forest scenes in order to have this non-verbal information about why they are doing what they are doing. And to have this timeless feeling, because of course this is a burning political subject, but the question is about more timeless things—things that were here before us humans and that will remain after us as well.

Hopefully!

Yes, hopefully! It was also important to have these nature scenes in order to lure the viewer inside, to listen to what these young people have to say. Because it’s often problematic when activists have a very strong agenda and are trying to teach you something, and you reject that very easily because you don’t want to listen when someone is preaching to you. So it was delicate how to balance all this, and we also didn’t want to make a film that would arouse anger or antipathy, because there is a lot of antipathy and even aggression against activists. I think basically they make us feel guilty of our own moral laziness. And I’m talking about myself [too]. We wanted to make people understand the ideas and actions behind those moments when we see them in the streets.

Still from ONCE UPON A TIME IN A FOREST. Photo by Teemu Liakka. ©Euphoria Film.

How did you work with the cinematographer on portraying the forests as well as protest actions? They seem to require different approaches, maybe one more dynamic.

I had one of the best nature cinematographers on my team. He could work in a way that didn’t disturb [the protagonists] too much. And also my sound person was learning to be a nature surveyor, surveying endangered species. I think that was also a big part of gaining their [the protagonists] trust. But yeah, the cinematographer Teemu Liakka has made quite a few polished nature films, like TALE OF THE SLEEPING GIANTS, like National Geographic films. We talked about how he had to downgrade what he does a bit, so that it doesn’t feel like too much for this particular film. We also decided that the animals that we see in the film must be the kind that anyone could meet in the nature, not all bears or wild animals like that. And before he started doing other cinematography, he used to specialize in diving, and we were able to use that skill as well [for the scenes of Minka diving]. I got that idea because Minka had put some diving images of herself on her Instagram. We also knew it was possible to have fish [in the shot]. Finland has tens of thousands of lakes. Many have suffered from pollution and are not that clear water anymore, but this particular lake is in the eastern part of Finland.

I think showing the forest’s beauty also conveys the sense of what we could lose.

Yeah, and it has to do with this generational sorrow, this environmental sorrow. Most of us have those feelings, but I think this generation is really having them and they see very clearly stuff that we don’t want to think about that much. So for me this is a generational film as well, and it’s been heartbreaking to see how this generation has already started to prepare itself for losing certain things. They are anticipating that, “Okay, we are losing this and that, but we are still trying to save at least something.” So that diving scene is a reminder that we still have these places, and we have to save them.

Still from ONCE UPON A TIME IN A FOREST. Photo by Teemu Liakka. ©Euphoria Film.

You change the aspect ratio in the diving scene, and other moments, too, right?

Yes, we have the cinemascope ratio in the beginning and in the middle with the diving scene and then in the end. Otherwise it’s 4:3, and the reason was that I was going to use more archive materials than I eventually ended up using. But I kept [the 4:3 ratio] in the film, because it felt like a very cozy aspect ratio for these young people, and it has a touch of nostalgia also. You get very near to them. But then we used the ’scope in those moments of freedom and when they are really in nature. Big love scenes for a forest!

Could you talk about Minka and Ida’s ideas about the forest, in the context of climate change but also for Finland’s vast forests specifically?

The Extinction Rebellion is about climate change, but I think in Finland, they realize that they have to concentrate more on forests, because it’s very concrete and we can really do something about it. In Finland there are 600,000 private forest-owners, and we have like 5.5 million people living in Finland. So it’s quite a big group of people and families having private forests. I am one of the forest owners, a very small one, and I started to think about what would I do with my forest. And then we have the [state] forest administration, which is under political governance. That belongs to all of us, so we are all forest owners here in Finland in one way or another. And what these youngsters are trying to do is make us see that our forests are not in as good a state as we generally think.

We are still living in the past in Finland, because after the Second World War, we needed the forest industry very badly. It helped us pay our war debts to the Soviet Union, and there was a big state program to build up the forest industry. And there are a lot of fictional films about these forest workers—the lumberjack was sort of a sex symbol. My parents met in forest work. My father, in the beginning of the 60s, went to work as a lumberjack, and my mother was cooking there. So the forest industry is really part of all our mental history. But we have over logged our forests, and there is a lot of biodiversity loss. We have broken the big forest areas into small parts, and the species can’t survive anymore.

So these young people are trying to make us see what is happening behind the scenes. Of course, there is a lot of diplomacy and negotiations—Greenpeace is negotiating all the time with the forest administration and the forestry companies and so on. But the activists are doing an important job of making public all that is happening, like that there is still clear-cutting. They are not telling us that we have to stop all forest industry. They are not naive. But we should protect more. It’s so easy to say, oh, these youngsters are so black-and-white and so idealistic. But their message is basically the same as what the researchers have been telling us.

What was it like filming their protests? You’re with them blocking a logging road, for example.

To tell you the truth I’ve been scared of police since I was a child. I always felt guilty when I saw a policeman, I don’t know why. But I’m not anymore! I know that the activists have different experiences, but the policemen in the film reminded me a bit of the police in FARGO—very kind, very polite. [laughs] There wasn’t this aggression that you normally see in an activist film, so that was surprising. But of course, sometimes it was heated to be in those situations and trying to capture it, like in the scene when Ida and the other girl were going to stop the logging machine in the dark, when it was minus 25 degrees. They went with their skis and said, “Oh, it’s easy to ski here.” There was snow up to the waist of the cinematographer who had this very heavy camera. And I was really afraid that the trees would fall on somebody’s neck! My editor told me that we don’t see this kind of scene so often in fiction films because it would require like 50 people to arrange it. It was only three of us plus the protagonists.

You also show them protesting inside a corporate office.

That was probably the most nerve-wracking situation for me. In the end, we had to leave with the others. But in Finland, you can film the police. And I also got some legal consultation along the way in order to protect the protagonists. I wanted to make sure that the film wouldn’t harm them. You can never be sure how the prosecutor can use your film if they are building up a bigger case against the young people. I gave that consultation to the protagonists as well. I’ve never made a film of people who have such a strong agenda. It’s quite demanding for the filmmaker: how to be close and distant at the same time, and how to remind them that I am not one of them. Even though I love you guys, my heart is with you! But I think it helped me that I’ve made films for such a long time, and I worked as a journalist before I became a filmmaker. So I know my boundaries also. But you really are so enchanted by their personalities, and they start relying on you and asking for things.

Still from ONCE UPON A TIME IN A FOREST. Photo by Teemu Liakka. ©Euphoria Film.

What were they asking for?

Well, Ida, when we were up in Lapland, she was like, “You must organize the snowplow so we can get out there and build our camp.” Very practical, giving me orders. But I love that side of her. She was 22 when we started filming her, and I’m so curious to know what she will do in 10 or 15 years. I’m sure she’ll be in some big position, doing something significant. She’s a bit like a Greta Thunberg personality. There is a similar kind of concentration. She’s so clear. My composer said to me that it’s so difficult to compose anything related to Ida, because it’s so crystal clear where she’s going. Everything felt to my composer so silly and superficial related to Ida. I kind of get it!

Was it important to you to include older generations in the film? Ida’s grandparents have differing reactions to her work...

Yeah, that was really important for the film. That’s our little window to the past, to this forest industry narrative I was talking about. So it was very meaningful to include that. And my mother is from the countryside as well, from the eastern part of Finland. That’s where I have now the forest with my sister. When my mother died two years ago, we inherited that small forest, and I think making this film has to do with my own process of losing my mother as well. That forest has a lot of family memories embedded in it. And I think most Finnish children have these memories that we’ve been just playing in the forests all the time. That was my place. So the forest industry is looking at our forests as an economical asset, but for most Finns, we have very spiritual memories from the forests. Eighty percent of Finns want to protect more. So there is a big contradiction between what we want and what is actually happening.

♦

• Director Interview: WORD FOR FOREST
• Behind the Scenes With Greta Thunberg
• Biodiversity in The Ancient Woods of Lithuania

Since January, both filmmakers have worked with acclaimed playwright Mêlisa Annis to prepare the readings. For the third year in a row, Annis produced the readings and assembled a stellar cast including David Alan Basche, Shaun Bennet Fauntleroy, Yuval Boim, Kendell Cafaro, Craig Wesley Devino, Vivia Font, Sarah Matteucci, Nick Ong, and Kyle June Williams. Moving forward, both Beed and Palmqvist will each work with an industry advisor and a science advisor to further develop their scripts with scientific accuracy and clear a path toward production.

Below, read more about the winning projects and check out photos from the occasion.

LA FORZA by Justine Beed - Winner of the 2023 Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize
Logline: “A semi-historical, romantic dramedy about the electric life of physicist Laura Bassi—the first female professor—and the husband who was her assistant.”

THE GARDEN by Lara Palmqvist - Winner of the 2023 Sloan Student Discovery Prize
Logline: “Drawing on timely concerns of climate change, biodiversity loss, and agricultural innovation, THE GARDEN follows a passionate plant breeder as he tries to secure his family’s future by developing genetically enhanced seeds while working for a controlling socialite who wants to transplant an elaborate garden onto her Kentucky estate. An ecological drama interested in interconnection, drawing links between social and environmental justice; opulence and exploitation; and food and the people who bring it to our plates.”

Mêlisa Annis, Justine Beed and Lara Palmqvist. Photo Credit: Thanassi Karageorgiou.

Kendell Cafaro and Nick Ong. Photo Credit: Thanassi Karageorgiou.

Craig Wesley Divino, foreground. Photo Credit: Thanassi Karageorgiou.

Vivia Font and Yuval Boim, foreground. Photo Credit: Thanassi Karageorgiou.

Nick Ong and Kyle June Williams. Photo Credit: Thanassi Karageorgiou.

David Alan Basche and Craig Wesley Divino. Photo Credit: Thanassi Karageorgiou.

The full cast takes their curtain call: Sarah Matteucci, Kendell Cafaro, Vivia Font, Yuval Boim, Shaun Bennet Fauntleroy, David Alan Basche, Craig Wesley Devino, Nick Ong and Kyle June Williams. Photo Credit: Thanassi Karageorgiou.

• Science on Screen at First Look 2024
• 2023 Sloan Student Prize Winners Celebrated at MoMI
• Winners of the 2023 Sloan Student Prizes Announced

Winner of the 2024 Sloan Science on Screen Award:

ON THE INVENTION OF SPECIES. Dir. Tania Hermida. World Premiere. “When Carla’s dad drags her to the Galápagos Islands for a convention on conservation and species evolution, she is less than thrilled. On the cusp of womanhood and grappling with the loss of her brother, Carla finds herself adrift on the historic archipelago that led to Charles Darwin’s breakthrough studies on adaptation. Befriending two young boys who become her emotional foils, Carla pretends to be a different version of herself in order to surmount this emotional and physical journey.”

ON THE INVENTION OF SPECIES makes its world premiere on April 27, preceded by an awards presentation and conversation with director Tania Hermida, actor Jeff Frazier, creative collaborator Martin Durán, and scientist Noah Whiteman. The festival program goes on to praise the Spanish-language feature:

“In this stunningly lensed lyrical debut, Tania Hermida deftly toys with parables while exploring the evolving relationship between man and nature. With Terrence Malick stylings, hints of Agnès Varda observational irony, and a dash of Alice Rohrwacher magical-realism, this tender film is a celebration of the shared sentient experience—biological and emotional.”

Two other films will be highlighted as part of the Science in Cinema Initiative on April 27:

MABEL. Dir. Nicholas Ma. World Premiere. “Biracial Callie (Lexi Perkel) loves trees and plants and little else in Nicholas Ma’s warm debut feature. Surly with her parents and intolerant of people who don’t share her interest, she’s also unhappy about changing schools after her family relocates. But as luck would have it, substitute teacher Ms. G (Judy Greer) is starting a botany unit in science class, and Callie wangles her way in. Held rapt by Ms. G’s lectures and online speeches, Callie develops an experiment raising chrysanthemums in darkness and manages to lure Agnes, her ebullient younger neighbor, into working on the project with her. Precocious, determined, and wryly funny, Callie is a unique protagonist who leverages her love of botany to propel herself into adolescence.”

This is the third time Sloan has recognized MABEL. Nicholas Ma previously earned two Sloan grants back-to-back: the Sloan 100k First Feature Award from NYU Tisch School of the Arts in 2019 and the 2020 Sloan Screenplay Development Award from Tribeca Film Institute.

ROB PEACE. Dir. Chiwetel Ejiofor. “In an acting tour de force, Jay Will plays the talented titular character, a young New Jersey science prodigy headed for the Ivy League, but heavily impacted by his past. While Rob is still an adolescent, his father (another impeccable turn from writer-director Chiwetel Ejiofor) is convicted of homicide and the boy devotes himself to proving his dad’s innocence. As a budding scientist excelling in biophysics, Rob enters Yale, attempting to negotiate this elite new environment alongside his connection to family and community. Based on Peace’s Yale roommate Jeff Hobbs’ bestselling biography, Ejiofor’s exquisite drama details the collision of a life lived under immense pressure. The film features terrific supporting performances by Mary J. Blige as Rob’s caring mother and Mare Winningham as a Yale professor who grants him special lab access.”

The screening of ROB PEACE will be preceded by a tribute to the achievements of Chiwetel Ejiofor. In the decades since his debut in Steven Spielberg’s AMISTAD, Ejiofor has amassed a body of work as not only an actor, but as a writer and director. ROB PEACE is the second feature film to exemplify Ejiofor's multi-hyphenate talents. He also starred in and co-wrote his 2019 directorial debut, THE BOY WHO HARNESSED THE WIND. Based on William Kamkwamba’s memoir of the same title, the film won the Sloan Feature Film Prize at the Sundance Film Festival that year. Ejiofor donated the $20,000 prize money to Kamkwamba’s foundation. Prior to ROB PEACE, Ejiofor starred in Sophie Barthes’ THE POD GENERATION, which screened at last year’s SFFILM as part of the same Science in Cinema initiative. A few months prior, THE POD GENERATION also won the Sloan Feature Film Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

The tribute will include a conversation with Chiwetel Ejiofor, actor Jay Will, and writer Jeff Hobbs. As no distribution deal for ROB PEACE has been announced yet, readers unable to catch the film at SFFILM might check out the source material: Jeff Hobbs’s The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace was published by Scribner in 2015.

• Made By Human: Sophie Barthes on THE POD GENERATION
• 2023 Sloan Winners at Columbia University and SFFILM
• Director Interview: Colin West on LINOLEUM

Pierre Janssen (February 22, 1824 – December 23, 1907) was a French scientist, inventor, architecture professor, and astronomer. His observations of the solar eclipse of August 18, 1868, in Guntur, India led to a series of discoveries. First, he noticed bright lines in the spectrum of the chromosphere, a star's outer atmosphere, showing that the chromosphere is gaseous. Janssen utilized a spectroscope, an instrument used to determine the chemical makeup of a visible source of light which later resulted in the discovery of the element helium. Second, during the eclipse, he suddenly realized that the use of the narrow slit of the spectroscope to observe the chromosphere would enable astronomers to study solar prominences—large, bright features extending outward from the Sun’s surface. With this new tool, astronomers could study these features at times other than during an eclipse, something not previously known. These discoveries aided his invention of the "Revolver photographique" also known as "The Janssen slide."

The Janssen slide in operation (engraving published in La nature, 1875).

The Janssen slide enabled a user to capture the world in motion: it was the instrument that originated chronophotography, a branch of photography based on capturing movement from a sequence of images. The Janssen slide was built by Antoine Redier and his son, and functioned by taking a series of images at short, regular and adjustable intervals of time. The revolver used two discs and a light-sensitive plate. It adapted the daguerreotype process, which was used in photography to achieve highly detailed images. The first disk with twelve holes would take a full turn every 18 seconds, so that each time a shutter window passed in front of the second disk with just one hole, the sensitive plate would be revealed beneath, capturing an image on the corresponding part of its surface.

Detailed view of the Janssen slide, Bulletin de la Société française de photographie, Volume 22.

The Janssen slide played a key role in one of the biggest 19th century scientific challenges: determining the distance between the Earth and the Sun, or a so-called astronomical unit. The only way to count an astronomical unit was to observe and document the astronomical phenomenon of the transit of Venus. In 1874, the passage of Venus over the face of the sun became the first moving image.

Janssen was able to show the world the importance of photography to astronomy. The technology he helped to pioneer is the origin of that which makes it possible to document and watch the upcoming total solar eclipse.

♦

• Science on Screen: Dr. Bob O’Dell on OUR HEAVENLY BODIES
• Art and Astronomy: Interview with Curator Mary-Kay Lombino
• Romance and Astronomy: From the 17th Century to the Present

Science & Film: The way that Angela uses the cell phone in DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD is as an outlet, but I wonder if you also see it as a problem. Why did you want to include these TikTok videos? And how do you see their role in society?

Radu Jude: Oh, such a big question. I think that filmmakers are of two kinds from this point of view: ones who are searching for, let's say, the purity of the cinematic language and others who like to combine things and to mess it up. And I think I belong to both categories. Mostly I like to combine things and to make these collages and patchworks. Rauschenberg is my master. I think cinema has this power to include so many things and to transform them into itself. It does this in ways others cannot. You cannot put a film into a poem, but you can put a poem in a film so it's like a bigger umbrella. And under this umbrella, you can put many things and you can create connections between those things.

I tried to train myself in a certain way, and the only way to do it, to pay attention to it properly, is to try to expand my likes, or not to care so much about what I like or what I dislike, to try to see everything as interesting, at least, if not beautiful. So, then, if you really start paying attention to things, everything becomes interesting. In the world of images—because to make cinema is to create images—I discover that more and more I'm attracted to everything in a certain way, or I can see that a TikTok or an Instagram video is very interesting from a certain point of view. A TV image is interesting, a cinema image is interesting in another way. All are part of the same kingdom of images if you want, so why not? Working with them makes you feel a little bit like not being averse or against them. You know, in the same way, like John Cage, for instance, who is one of my heroes, at some point, he lived in LA for a while, in the 50s or 60s and there were a lot of radios playing things around—like a cacophony of radios. And he said that he solved this problem by making this piece with six radios turned on and off all the time. Working with those radios, he somehow tamed them. And now when he's going out in the street, he feels like they are playing his song, his piece, you know? So I think there's a little bit like that. Now whenever I see these vernacular images, let's say, of all kinds, I have the feeling it's part of my universe. So, I don't have a feeling that I have to judge them. Of course, I do, and I think we need to analyze them, and we need to judge them, I think we have to be judgmental. But, at the same time, I feel that because they belong to my universe in a certain way, I am alright with them. And I see them as more beautiful than before.

And then you asked me, what is [my perspective] towards society? Well, here, I think that the game is on. And of course, what we speak about these kinds of images is just the surface, because we know that these platforms can spy on you, that they're full of garbage of advertising, and it's full of garbage of the toxic politics and conspiracy theories and everything. All of this goes together with that. I don't know how can you separate one from another? But I understand that at the same time, it's not easy, and it's maybe not healthy for ourselves, but they are there. So if you ask me if I would want these things to exist? Well, in some cases, yes. Maybe in some cases, no. But they exist anyway. So, instead of crying over the death of cinema, maybe transform them into cinema? I don't know, it's the least we can do I think.

S&F: I wouldn't have thought of John Cage in relation to your work, but I can see what you mean, in terms of being attuned to things that are around you in a new way. And maybe not being fearful of them...

RJ: I think I am fearful of them. But then using them and working with them, you become less fearful, I have this feeling. I think here Cage is right. It's the same with people. You know, sometimes you have the feeling that someone is a terrible person–someone you don't know, or know only from online or from writing–and you meet that person and you might be completely surprised that he or she is not at all that terrible.

All of these things are, first of all, as I said, they exist and then you can use them like every tool or everything in the world, in many ways. You can do art with them, or you can harm with them, or you can lie with them, or you can kill with them. I don't know, it's the same with everything. We wouldn't give away a knife just because you can kill someone [with it]. I try to use them in a good way.

S&F: Could you tell me a little bit about what it was like on set? A lot of it takes place in the car, and using different camera modalities.

RJ: I don't have stories to tell you, it was really smooth. Ilinca, first of all, is a great actress, but also a great, great driver. She's used to driving in the chaos of Romanian traffic, so that helped us enormously. We made the film very fast. I think we shot everything in 21 days or something like that. The first cut was like three hours and 20 minutes, I don't remember. It was made quite fast according to regular standards in cinema. There was not so much time to think about that much. We were just going through filming, filming, filming all the time. The DOP is also very, very fast DOP. So everything was just doing it without thinking. In some cases, this is a good thing, in some cases it's not good because after a few days, I said oh my god, if I would have thought more about this scene or this shot, or that, I could have made it better, but it was too late already. The only thing I can have a complaint about is that after the first day of first days of shooting I had a terrible insomnia for two or three days in a row, and I was a wreck. So then I started to take and I still remain taking melatonin every evening, basically, because I cannot sleep. I'm afraid of being insomniac again. That was the only thing that was difficult for me on set, let's say.

S&F: I'm sorry.

RJ: No, it's just a trivial thing to have a kind of chat because otherwise, it was a non-eventful film. I don't have things like this happened or that happened. For other films I had more things like that. But for this, not really, it was really smooth.

Ilinca Manolache in DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD. Courtesy of Mubi.

S&F: How did you capture the TikTok videos Ilinca was recording?

RJ: She was doing it with the iPhone. She was recording, she had the material in the phone, and then we transferred it to hard drives and use it in the editing.

S&F: And how did you find or create her TikTok avatar?

RJ: The avatar is exactly a creation of the actress–of Ilinca Manolache. She did it in the pandemic, while other people were reading Proust, or I don't know, doing something else. Having lots of sex, I don't know. She was creating this character and posting it on social media. She's a respected actress in theater, and people from theater are sometimes well, let's say, less open to these kinds of things. They said well, why doesn't she do a Shakespearean monologue instead of this junk? But she went on with this and I think it's brilliant. I really loved it and it's so much on the edge. Ilinca says about it that it's a kind of critique, a feminist critique, etc. I understand that and I agree with her, but in the same time, she likes it so much, you know, that you can feel there's something more fishy behind... a dirtier impulse. Which makes me remember that Jacques Rivette used to say about Verhoeven, when Paul Verhoeven made STARSHIP TROOPERS with these giant bugs, you know? Rivette said it's obviously that what Verhoeven says that he made the film as a kind of critique against the American military industry, etc. is just bullshit because he loves these bugs so much, that's why he made the film. [laughs] That can be turned back against me, because there was a friend that said, I really think it’s problematical this Bobiță thing. And I said, why? He said, because of all this. And I said, yeah, but it's a critique. And he said, yeah, but it's obvious that you like it so much to stage that. So. That's the mystery of life. We like dirty things.

S&F: For what it's worth, I think it does add another layer because she's enjoying it, it kind of makes you reflect on why you enjoy it too...

RJ: Actually, I think I like things on the edge. There was a recent article, I think by Beatrice Loayza, who also did an interview with me. That text I think was very good because she said that she likes things to be ambiguous. She was speaking about feminism, if Barbie is feminist, these kinds of things, and she said, she considers when things are ambiguous, they are more interesting. I believe it to be so, a bit like that.

Nina Hoss in DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD. Courtesy of Mubi.

S&F: Do you think you would use cell phone technology again in the process of filmmaking? What do you think the particulars of this aesthetic lend to the film?

RJ: If I'm gonna use it or not anymore, this I don't know. In some cases, yes. For instance, now I'm just finishing my two new montage films. One of them is with advertisements from the 90s in Romania. It is made together with a philosopher Christian Ferencz-Flatz. We use these images to put in montage, in editing. Another I did myself is a film with only \ screen recordings of a webcam from a place. So I'm using this already.

Speaking of quality, you mentioned quality, and I think you speak about technical quality. Well, I think this is an important issue. Cinema is a little bit less open than like for instance painting is, because in painting when a new technology appears it doesn't erase the previous one. When watercolors appeared, this didn't mean that oil painting is not anymore, or when pencil appeared, etc. Painters or people who do visual arts can use everything. I try to think of myself in the same lines–if these people can do it, why shouldn't we? Why can't I use a 16mm black and white and an iPhone? And actually, for my next feature film I'm shooting this summer, hopefully, I will shoot it on the iPhone 15. I'm really eager to do it in this way. Also maybe to tame it a little bit, to like it myself, to educate myself a little bit.

♦

• Foregrounding Nature: Bas Devos on HERE
• Michael Bilandic's COVID Comedy: Project Space 13
• Interview: Jessica Sarah Rinland

Science & Film: Can you tell me about the genesis of this project?

Ido Mizrahy: A producer on my last documentary, Valda Witt, wanted to do something about the mission to Mars. This was back in 2014. We started taking these fun trips to Marshall Space Center, Johnson Space Center, and Kennedy Space Center to meet astronauts and flight directors. It was all fascinating, but I couldn’t figure out the story. It felt like a huge canvas. When we finally met the psychology and behavioral health team at Johnson Space Center, it changed everything. I thought, ‘We're not talking about space right now. We're talking about the importance of keeping these familial, personal connections between people in order to support the mission. This is a story I can relate to.’

Shortly after that I was introduced to Cady. It was important to talk to the psychology teams [at NASA]. It was important to talk to Dr. Al Holland, but then Cady told me her personal story. That really opened the door.

Cady Coleman: I love that Ido talked to many different astronauts, with NASA's great cooperation, because we all have different stories. We always joke around [saying], if you ask five astronauts, you'll get six opinions.

S&F: Cady, the documentary makes clear you’ve communicated your experience to NASA as part of standard protocol, but how did participating in this documentary change your narrative?

CC: Ido asked things that nobody had ever asked. I think that the human aspect of this movie puts the human into ‘human spaceflight.’ It is something that must be a part of the journey when thinking about going further [into space.] I loved that Ido was going to help NASA tell this story because it's not NASA’s forte to dwell on this part of it.

Ido also interviewed my son Jamey separately. Answering Ido’s questions opened up a real avenue of exploration for Jamey. I cried at different things, including the trailer. Some of the lines are just so true about how hard a thing this was to do, yet I don’t regret going. Those hard things are part of life and part of exploration.

S&F: The film points to NASA having had an engineering culture, where psychology and human factors were less of a consideration until the ISS was established, meaning longer-term missions. Ido, what did you learn about the development of those areas of study within NASA?

IM: Dr. Al Holland, Dr. Jack Schuster, and Dr. Alexandra Whitmire are all open about how complicated it has been for NASA to transition over the years from a culture that initially came from the military. Then it was rooted in engineering before coming to recognize that the human is a slightly more complicated piece of machinery. It's not machinery at all. That needs to be addressed and is always evolving. For instance, how much these departments help in selection now is a much newer thing. That was only added in the last few years.

What should NASA be looking for in a candidate? There are so many things that go into selection, but it’s this idea of an astronaut being an imperfect human being who understands their own frailty and realizes that when they go away for a very long time, it's going to be complicated. It sounds simple, but promoting this facade of everything being fine is much harder to work with psychologically. That concept has really helped bring along some of the people you see in the film. They're incredible, but they're also one of us, which makes for much more interesting storytelling.

S&F: Cady, what developments did you see during your career at NASA?

CC: Traditionally the psychiatric element has been simply evaluation. Is this person mentally stable or not? That’s been the required question, not whether you’d want to spend six months with them. What I find to be a great challenge is that astronauts have many different personalities. I flew with Scott Kelly and he knows that I tell this story: From the outset people asked him ‘How are you going to be with Cady? She talks a lot.’ Nobody asked me if I wanted to go with a person of so few words! In the end, even though we're very different and didn't know each other that well at all before we flew, we had a very special relationship. You find the things that you have in common, things you didn’t expect.

S&F: The film touches on some of the tools that might be employed to benefit forthcoming Mars’ missions’ astronauts: virtual reality, AI companions, even hibernation. Cady, how do these solutions strike you considering your own experience?

CC: I am a person who explores verbally and needs to vent at the end of the day, so the ability to have conversations with family and get feedback was vital. I’ve thought about what I would do if I couldn’t get that feedback for long spans of time, so to have an AI presence that would answer just like the person you care about would be interesting.

It's easy to poke fun. I've done some things with the MIT Media Lab where I’ve been asked questions like, ‘Do you think it would make a difference to you to eat lunch in your favorite restaurant, brought to you by Google Earth and Google Street?’ I didn’t think so. Then when I tried it, I felt differently. You must be open to realizing you can’t have exactly what you had, so why not bring in these new things?

S&F: At one point hibernation solution to is referred to as ‘the stuff of science fiction.’ Ido, as a filmmaker, what are your thoughts on the interplay between science fiction and real scientific innovation? Do you think films like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY inspire scientific innovation or are certain misrepresentations in cinema a hindrance?

IM: It’s hard. As a filmmaker, that’s the stuff that makes you want to be a filmmaker. Whether it’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY or more recently MOON, I think the important thing is not to cave into fear. It's easy to go to that dark place right away. Maybe it’s because of those cinematic references. Maybe it’s because of very normal fears around technology stealing who we are and making us disposable. That's the easy way to think about those things and we should continue to think about them because you want to be careful and you want to regulate, but you also want to explore those things fully without keeping your foot on the brake.

CC: I celebrate what a film brings: the ability to have more storytellers. I think of movies like Ido’s as a way to start the conversation.

♦

• Director Interview: Molly McGlynn on FITTING IN
• Director Interview: Ian Cheney on New Release THE ARC OF OBLIVION
• Mothlight: The Filmmakers of NOCTURNES

Another crop of projects contemplates awe-inspiring wonders of nature, from hummingbirds (Sally Aitken’s EVERY LITTLE THING) and moths (Anupama Srinivasan and Anirban Dutta’s NOCTURNES) to lichen (Ondřej Vavrečka’s LICHENS ARE THE WAY) and fungi (Joseph Nizeti and Gisela Kaufmann’s FUNGI: WEB OF LIFE).

DOX: AWARD

LIFE AND OTHER PROBLEMS. Dir. Max Kestner. World Premiere. “The meaning of life, death and everything else? The possible answers are plenty in Max Kestner's adventurous film, which starts when the death of a giraffe at the Copenhagen Zoo goes viral from Hollywood to Chechnya.”

ONCE UPON A TIME IN A FOREST. Dir. Virpi Suutari. World Premiere. “Biodiversity and generation gaps collide in a politically urgent and thoughtful film about two young activists' fight to save the vast Finnish forests. Is it still civil disobedience when you know you have both history and the future on your side?”

NORDIC: DOX

HARD TO BREAK. Dir. Krista Moisio, Anna-Maija Heinonen. World Premiere. “Two young Finns are fueled by their (self-)destructive love for each other as their parallel lives on social media become further and further removed from reality.”

NEW:VISION

AND STILL, IT REMAINS. Dir. Arwa Aburawa, Turab Shah. World Premiere. “A meditation on time, justice and the aftermath of the French nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara.”

EFFORTS OF NATURE. Dir. Morgan Quaintance. International Premiere. “A new and evocative work that combines found footage, analogue 16mm and satellite imagery – not to mention loops and repeats – in an investigation of temporal processes from two radically different perspectives: the physical being of the body and the planetary, geological conditions.”

LICHENS ARE THE WAY. Dir. Ondřej Vavrečka. World Premiere. “A close-up study of radically different life forms that puts our own human scale in a new and thought-provoking light.”

Still from LICHENS ARE THE WAY. Courtesy of CPH: DOX.

LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE. Dir. Yuyan Wang. International Premiere. “A visual essay on artificial light in an age where control, consumption and entertainment are intricately linked.”

MY WANT OF YOU PARTAKES OF ME. Dir. Sasha Litvintseva, Beny Wagner. World Premiere. “An imaginative film about the digestive process as a condition for our physical existence - and as a prism for an intellectual journey through the cultural history of the body.”

PREEMPTIVE LISTENING. Dir. Aura Satz. World Premiere. “Sound and film art on innovative wavelengths in a work that explores the function and iconic value of the siren in a time of overlapping natural and man-made disasters. A participatory piece with contributions from 20 different sound artists.”

TWO SUNS. Dir. Superflex. World Premiere. “A collaborative film work created by the artist group Superflex in collaboration with residents of the Marshall Islands, where the echoes of America's many nuclear tests still reverberate.”

HUMAN:RIGHTS AWARD

MARCHING IN THE DARK. Dir. Kinshuk Surjan. World Premiere. “The widows come together to break the vicious cycle of debt and climate related chaos in Indian agriculture that has pushed their desperate husbands to kill themselves - and leave them with the debt. A powerful and compelling film about solidarity between sisters.”

THE RECOVERY CHANNEL. Dir. Ellen Ugelstad. International Premiere. “A filmmaker who has been set back by her own brother's decades-long battle with the mental health system, invents a fictional TV channel to expose the injustices of modern psychiatric treatment.”

THE SKY ABOVE ZENICA. Dir. Nanna Frank Møller, Zlatko Pranjic. World Premiere. “In the centre of Europe, one of the world's three most polluted cities has united its citizens in a common fight for a viable future. But money, power and environmental politics prove to be as toxic an opponent as the factory smoke that clouds the city.”

F:ACT AWARD

CAN’T FEEL NOTHING. Dir. David Borenstein. World Premiere. “An eye-opening film about numbness in the age of social media. The diagnosis is alarming, but it is made with understated humour and energy by director David Borenstein, himself a screen zombie in digital rehab.”

LIE TO ME. Dir. Baar Tyrmi. International Premiere. “They promised a digital revolution of the financial market. It all turned out to be one of the biggest scams in history, but 10 years and countless scandals later, OneCoin is still in action. A docu-thriller about psychology and manipulation in a crypto-age.”

THE BATTLE FOR LAIKIPIA. Dir. Daphne Matziaraki, Peter Murimi. International Premiere. “Drought, politics and colonial history collide in a stormy and unpredictable conflict between Kenyan cattle herders and white ranchers in the vast African country. A complex and wise film about the consequences of climate change.”

SPECIAL PREMIERES

APOLLO THIRTEEN: SURVIVAL. Dir. Peter Middleton. World Premiere. “The greatest and most iconic space rocket drama in history is told in a thrilling and human way through crisp, crunchy archive footage and unique audio clips from the shuttle, the control centre and the astronauts' families.”

Still from APOLLO THIRTEEN: SURVIVAL. Courtesy of CPH: DOX.

ENO. Dir. Gary Hustwit. International Premiere. “Experience Brian Eno's creative process and foresight in a film that changes every time it is shown! Using new technology, director Gary Hustwit has created a phantom portrait of the musical genius that reassembles his life's work.”

GRAND THEFT HAMLET. Dir. Sam Crane, Pinny Grylls. European Premiere. “Two unemployed friends have a fresh idea: They want to stage Shakespeare's Hamlet in GRAND THEFT AUTO. But even in a virtual world, reality intrudes in a wild and trippy film shot entirely inside the ultra-violent video game.”

THE PERFECT MEAL – THE SECRETS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET. Dir. Alexandros Merkouris. “A food-loving and scientific tribute to the Mediterranean diet and, not least, the liquid gold: olive oil.”

Still from THE PERFECT MEAL – THE SECRETS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET. Courtesy of CPH: DOX.

HIGHLIGHTS

ANTARCTICA CALLING. Dir. Luc Jacquet. “The sequel to the international mega-hit THE MARCH OF THE PENGUINS returns to Antarctica on an epic adventure with director Luc Jacquet as a familiar guide in the alien landscapes.”

AS THE TIDE COMES IN. Dir. Juan Palacios, Sofie Husum Johannesen. “The 27 residents of the Danish Wadden Sea island of Mandø experience the forces of climate change in the form of severe weather and the risk of flooding. Still, they stubbornly cling to their identity as islanders, as they have done for generations.”

BOTTLEMEN. Dir. Nemanja Vojinovic. “7,000 years ago, the area was one of the largest civilisations in prehistoric Europe. Today, it is the largest landfill on the continent. An unexpected festival hit about the men who fight a daily battle against the fury of the elements.”

EVERY LITTLE THING. Dir. Sally Aitken. “Hummingbirds are the fairies of nature's grand fairy tale. But for a woman who has dedicated her life to saving them from her Los Angeles mansion, the magical creatures are more than just cute.”

Still from EVERY LITTLE THING. Courtesy of CPH: DOX.

IBELIN. Dir. Benjamin Ree. “A young Norwegian gamer with an unusual double life in World of Warcraft turns out to be a true online superhero, much to his family's surprise.”

MINTED. Dir. Nicholas Bruckman. International Premiere. “How can a digital artwork that anyone can download for free be sold for 69 million dollars? Get the answer - and lots of new questions to ponder - in a critical and entertaining film about culture and capital in the 21st century.”

THE CONTESTANT. Dir. Clair Titley. “A real-world THE TRUMAN SHOW in which a Japanese man became a national superstar without realizing it through a bizarre reality TV show. A story stranger than fiction, which gets a second chapter as he is looking back at it today.”

ARTISTS & AUTEURS

OUR BODY. Dir. Claire Simon. “Monumental and unfiltered story about women and their bodies, told empathetically and insightfully through the eyes of patients, doctors and nurses in a Parisian public hospital.”

YOU ARE CLOSER TO GOD WHEN YOU DO NOT INDULGE. Dir. Tore Hallas. World Premiere. “A visual art film based on facts that blends queer erotic imagery with scientific research into the economic consequences of fatness.”

PARA: FICTIONS

HERE. Dir. Bas Devos. “A quiet romance between a Romanian construction worker and a Belgian-Chinese biologist unfolds on the enchanted outskirts of a European city in Bas Devos' breathtaking feature film, where nature and the environment play the third lead role.”

TRUE CHRONICLES OF THE BLIDA JOINVILLE PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL IN THE LAST CENTURY, WHEN DR FRANTZ FANON WAS HEAD OF THE FIFTH WARD BETWEEN 1953 AND 1956. Dir. Abdenour Zahzah. “Three years in the life of revolutionary post-colonial thinker Frantz Fanon. Based on extensive research and Fanon's own notes, and reconstructed as a cinematic docufiction from a psychiatric hospital in Algeria.”

URGENT MATTERS

FOOD INC. 2. Dir. Melissa Robledo, Robert Kenner. “Turbo chickens, plant-based steaks and a pandemic. A lot has happened since the first FOOD INC. film, and it's time for a fresh in-depth look at the food industry and at possible solutions.”

SCIENCE

ARCHIVE OF THE FUTURE. Dir. Joerg Burger. “The Natural History Museum in Vienna is a vast, labyrinthine archive of meticulously archived records, rare animals and curious stories. A picturesque and wryly humorous film from a veritable Noah's Ark headed for an uncertain future.”

Still from ARCHIVE OF THE FUTURE. Courtesy of CPH: DOX.

DEEP SKY. Dir. Nathaniel Kahn. “Experience the furthest reaches of our galaxy in IMAX where the incredible images from the James Webb Telescope are framed in ideal conditions on the big screen.”

ETERNAL YOU. Dir. Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck. “Can modern technology realize the dream of eternal life? Yes, say the sci-fi optimists in Silicon Valley, who are determined to make death obsolete through artificial intelligence in a film that soberly and thoughtfully raises the biggest questions - and provides possible answers.”

FUNGI: WEB OF LIFE. Dir. Joseph Nizeti, Gisela Kaufmann. “With Björk as narrator and in IMAX 3D, we are taken on a fascinating journey of discovery into the world of fungi, which may hold new solutions to our biggest problems.”

HUNT FOR THE OLDEST DNA. Dir. Niobe Thompson. World Premiere. “Led by star scientist Eske Willerslev, a team of researchers are sequencing DNA from before the Ice Age for the first time in history. A project that could revolutionize our understanding of the history of life itself.”

LOW-TECH. Dir. Adrien Bellay. “The solution to the climate crisis is already here if you ask the growing low-tech movement, who insist that with simple means and great ingenuity, it is possible to live a modern life without destroying the planet.”

MAGIC MUD. Dir. Jakob Gottschau. World Premiere. “Star geologist Minik Rosing loves mud. Especially Greenlandic mud, also known as glacial rock flour - but can he prove that this magical mud can really save both the climate and solve global inequality?”

NOCTURNES. Dir. Anupama Srinivasan, Anirban Dutta. “The night is buzzing with life in the dense jungles of the mountains on the border between India and Bhutan, where two local biologists study a microcosm of moths. A deep, atmospheric film sensation with an exceptional sound design.”

Still from NOCTURNES. Courtesy of CPH: DOX.

PALM OIL IN THE LAND OF ORANGUTANS. Dir. Dan Säll. World Premiere. "Copenhagen Zoo is partnering with a palm oil plantation in Borneo to shift production in a sustainable direction.”

THE BONES. Dir. Jeremy Xido. World Premiere. “Dinosaur fossils are worth their weight in gold in a market where serious scientists and fortune hunters vie to be first to the next big find. An eye-opening adventure documentary about bones, cash and big egos - and an absolute must for dinosaur fans.”

THE MUM IN ME. Dir. Hilde Merete Haug. “A sensitive and scientific analysis of infertility as a social phenomenon that will make you blush if you have ever asked your colleague when they are going to have children.”

DANISH: DOX

THE NATURE OF GRIEF. Dir. Sami Saif. World Premiere. “A gentle, personal story about a filmmaker who has lost his older brother and decides to explore the culture of grief with a group of experts in psychology.”

• Mothlight: The Filmmakers of NOCTURNES
• Reanimating the Dead: The Filmmakers of ETERNAL YOU
• Director Interview: Clair Titley on THE CONTESTANT

We attended the film’s world premiere in Berlin where Castro spoke about the film. It began as an art project, she explained. Castro was partially inspired by an article about spiders in Australia that overwinter and are doing so earlier and earlier because of climate change. “I got a grant for a research project, and the research was about how it would be if human beings were hibernators.” This project was the seed of THE HUMAN HIBERNATION. The film begins with a child emerging from hibernation when snow is still on the ground. It is too early. They search for others, screaming fruitlessly. Little by little, people awaken, talking about the long night, trying to make sense of new family configurations that emerge on awakening amongst those who manage to find each other. In one memorable scene, a family gorges wordlessly on a spread that could be drawn from an Old Master’s painting.

Still from THE HUMAN HIBERNATION with Clara Muck Dietrich, Demetrius Hollimon, Jane Hubbell, Brian Stevens, Neil O’Neil Solidago, Solidago River, Kris Koon, Dustin Bothwell. Courtesy of the Berlinale.

In the society Castro invents for THE HUMAN HIBERNATION, humans are decentered from the narrative. As much time is spent on the landscape, on the non-human animals that populate it, as on its human inhabitants. The humans that do populate the film barely speak, and when they do, they are reverent towards their animal kin. One character notes that they have to learn to communicate without speaking, like animals.

Castro spoke about her admiration for those who listen, and how there are narratives built “from religion, from science, about how nature works, and actually I feel that all these narratives take us farther from nature...” Gorgeous scenes of animals rewilding landscapes—in particular farm animals such cows, chickens, and goats—are given ample space and time to play out. “I really wanted to film animals and humans at the same level,” the filmmaker commented. At the end of the film, the credits note all of the animals that were filmed. No domesticated animals were used. The filmmakers worked patiently to film the scenes as they happened, blending documentary and fiction filmmaking practices.

THE HUMAN HIBERNATION is written and directed by Anna Cornudella Castro, co-writted by Lluís Sellarès, filmed by Arthur Pol Camprubí, edited by Marc Roca Vives, with music by Emili Bosch Molina. It stars Clara Muck Dietrich, Demetrius Hollimon, Jane Hubbell, Brian Stevens, and Neil O'Neil.

• Mothlight: The Filmmakers of NOCTURNES
• HERE at the Berlinale
• Mindaugas Survila on THE ANCIENT WOODS

Sloan-winning filmmaker Swetha Regunathan will also join the festival for a session of Working on It, a lab-like environment for work-in-progress screenings, workshops, and discussions about the artistic process. Lastly, Curator of Science & Technology Sonia Epstein has organized a gallery exhibition of artist Fiona Tan's new work Footsteps, which will open in conjunction with First Look and remain on view through June 16, 2024.

Details on the above are as follows:

MAGIC MOUNTAIN

Thursday, Mar 14, 2024 at 8:15 p.m.

With directors Mariam Chachia and Nik Voigt in person

Dir. Mariam Chachia, Nik Voigt. Georgia/Poland. 2023, 75 mins. DCP. In Georgian and Russian with English subtitles. In the spectacular mountains of southwest Georgia sits the Abastumani sanatorium, a treatment hospital for patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis. As in Thomas Mann’s influential novel, the central character in MAGIC MOUNTAINis the sanitorium, which becomes a site of fantasies and nightmares, a home of the living and the dead, inhabited at different times by the rich and those with nowhere else to go. With a precise approach to image and sound, the film documents the lives of patients, nurses, and doctors in the now dilapidated, once majestic building, and the unlikely home they’ve made for themselves within the treatment regimen their condition requires. Georgian filmmaker Mariam Chachia’s epistolary voiceover is a love letter that also exorcises Abastumani from her psyche—she was almost committed there when she was diagnosed with TB—and a reflection on the place of the sanatorium within Georgian society. Docs Award for Best Film, 2023 DocsBarcelona. Presented as part of Science on Screen. New York premiere

KNIT'S ISLAND

Dir. Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse, and Quentin L’helgoualc’h. France. 2023, 95 mins. DCP. In English and Frenchwith English subtitles. On the 250 km2 island of Chernarus, an Eastern European, post-Soviet republic in the Green Sea, chaos and destruction reign as people infected with a zombifying virus threaten the survivors. French filmmaking trio Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse, and Quentin L’helgoualc’h drop into this fictional landscape, which exists within the world of the video game DayZ, as journalistic avatars. Over 963 hours, before and during COVID lockdowns, the team endeavors to stay alive long enough to film their interactions with the surprising community of people who spend their time in this VR world. Shot with aesthetic precision solely within the game engine, KNIT'S ISLANDmanages to crack the veneer of players’ characters, giving us a window into their “real” lives. But which reality is more real to the players? Jury Prize, Burning Lights Competition, 2023 Visions du Réel, Cinematic Vision Award, Camden International Film Festival. Presented as part of Science on Screen and Welcome to the Machine. New York premiere

Sloan Screenplay Readings

Select scenes from the two screenplays awarded the 2023 Sloan Student Prizes—Grand Jury Prize winner Justine Beed’sLa Forza and Discovery Prize winner Lara Palmqvist’s The Garden—will be read by professional actors as part of this special program, produced and directed by Mêlisa Annis, and followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers. Free with RSVP.

Fiona Tan: Footsteps—Artist Reception

Join us for a reception with artist Fiona Tan to celebrate the opening of Footsteps, now on view in the Amphitheater Gallery. The reception will include a conversation between Tan and curator Sonia Epstein.
RSVP to attend.

• Winners of the 2023 Sloan Student Prizes
• First Look 2024
• Fiona Tan: Footsteps

Tickets and passes are still available for the festival, which is currently underway. The lineup showcases a range of short and feature length films, narrative and documentary alike. We recommend Sophie Jarvis’s UNTIL BRANCHES BEND, winner of the AFF Breakthrough Award. Sloan Science and Film’s Sonia Epstein interviewed Jarvis following the film’s world premiere at Toronto International Film Festival in September 2022. Molly McGlynn’s recently released FITTING IN, a Sloan Science on Film Showcase selection at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, also screens March 2. Rounding out the festival’s' science programming on March 3 is a Sloan- sponsored screening of Nicole Newnham’s documentary THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SHERE HITE, followed by a panel on data, science and feminism moderated by computational scientist Dr. Saima Akhtar of Barnard College.

More detail about the new Sloan winners is below.

Winner of the 2024 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Athena List Development Grant:

SCARCE by Mrittika “Mou” Sarin
Logline: “After discovering that the water supply of an underprivileged community has been stolen, a cynical software engineer fights to right this injustice — even as it draws her into conflict with her idealistic son.”

This is the second Sloan grant for Sarin, who previously won the 2019 Sloan UCLA Screenwriting Grant for the same project.

Winner of the 2024 Alfred P. Sloan AFF Writers Lab Fellowship:

THE AQUANAUTS by Rachel Caccese
Logline: “In the summer of 1970, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sends the first all-female team of marine biologists on a two-week underwater mission. The women must battle the dangers below while overcoming obstacles on the surface. Inspired by real events.”

• New Sloan Winners at NYU and Athena Film Festival
• Interview with Cherien Dabis: What the Eyes Don’t See
• Director Interview: Molly McGlynn on FITTING IN

Below, read more about the winning projects and check out photos from the celebration. Professional actors will perform staged readings of selected scenes from each winning project, produced and directed by Sloan grantee Mêlisa Annis, on March 16 as part of MoMI’s 2024 First Look Festival.

The winner of the 2023 Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize:

LA FORZA by Justine Beed (USC)

Logline: “A semi-historical, romantic dramedy about the electric life of physicist Laura Bassi—the first female professor—and the husband who was her assistant.”

Jury citation: “LA FORZA is an exceptional treatment for a series—full of wit and romance—that tells the story of an underappreciated woman in science. The jury was impressed by the way in which the writer depicts eighteenth-century science and brings the characters to life. The jury is delighted to award the Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize to LA FORZA.”

Justine Beed accepts her award. Photo Credit: Rob Kim, Getty Images for Museum of the Moving Image

Honorable Mention for the 2023 Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize:

THE LIGHT IN YOUR EYES by Emma Zetterberg (NYU)

Logline: “Allvar Gullstrand, a Swedish scientist who won the Nobel Prize in 1911 for his contributions to understanding eyesight, is blinded by his own grief over losing his legacy and decides to prevent Albert Einstein from winning a Nobel Prize.”

Jury citation: “A gracefully written historical drama that explores scientific rivalry and a complex family relationship. The jury was moved by the honest dialogue, articulate storytelling, and the potential to visualize scientific concepts. The jury is pleased to award honorable mention to THE LIGHT IN YOUR EYES.”

Justine Beed, Lara Palmqvist, Doron Weber and Emma Zetterberg. Photo Credit: Rob Kim, Getty Images for Museum of the Moving Image

The winner of the 2023 Sloan Student Discovery Prize:

THE GARDEN by Lara Palmqvist (University of Texas, Austin)

Logline: “Drawing on timely concerns of climate change, biodiversity loss, and agricultural innovation, THE GARDEN follows a passionate plant breeder as he tries to secure his family’s future by developing genetically enhanced seeds while working for a controlling socialite who wants to transplant an elaborate garden onto her Kentucky estate. An ecological drama interested in interconnection, drawing links between social and environmental justice; opulence and exploitation; and food and the people who bring it to our plates.”

Jury citation: “The jury found THE GARDEN to be an impressive portrayal of a world grappling with the many devastating effects of climate change. The script is carefully attentive to the complexity of issues related to food production, plant genetics, and agricultural science. It is an original, poetic, and mythological, yet grounded, story. The jury is thrilled to award the Sloan Student Discovery Prize to THE GARDEN.”

Lara Palmqvist accepts her award. Photo Credit: Rob Kim, Getty Images for Museum of the Moving Image

Lara Palmqvist (left) and Justine Beed (right) in conversation with Beatrice Loayza (center). Photo Credit: Rob Kim, Getty Images for Museum of the Moving Image

Lara Palmqvist, Emma Zetterberg, Dr. Reyhaneh Maktoufi, Casimir Nozkowski, Anna Konkle and Justine Beed. Photo Credit: Rob Kim, Getty Images for Museum of the Moving Image

Beatrice Loayza, Justine Beed, Doron Weber, Lara Palmqvist, and Aziz Isham. Photo Credit: Rob Kim, Getty Images for Museum of the Moving Image

Sonia Epstein, Beatrice Loayza, Casimir Nozkowski, Aziz Isham, Anna Konkle and Dr. Reyhaney Maktoufi. Photo Credit: Rob Kim, Getty Images for Museum of the Moving Image

• Winners of the 2023 Sloan Student Prizes Announced
• 2023 Sloan Student Prize Finalists and Mentors Announced
• Winners of the 2022 Sloan Student Prizes

The interview has been re-published below in its entirety.

Science & Film: THE ARC OF OBLIVION has a sort of handmade quality and beautiful animations, how did you come to that tone and style and how was that related to the subject of the film?

Ian Cheney: I think I've come to a place where I want the style of a film, like the animation, the way we shoot it, but increasingly also the soundscape–almost like the physical culture of the film–I want that to really emerge from the film topic. I suppose it sounds like, why wouldn't you do that? I haven't always put in that work. But I've loved when a film I've worked on has been able to respond to the subject matter with the very fabric of the film itself. So for this film, it seemed like if we were going to be cutting to archival imagery, it shouldn't just look like every other film that cuts to archival imagery–full screen. It should do so a little bit self-consciously. It can end up feeling all very film school, but I tried to give it a certain, as you suggested, a certain whimsical tone that would allow us to haul this tiny, silly little TV all around the world and put it on icebergs, and in the Sahara Desert, and so on and so forth. It was a mirthful solution to the problems of how we tell the story–how memory works and how archives works.

S&F: You have a lovely voiceover throughout, but we don't see you right away. I read the television sort of as the presence of the filmmaker.

IC: Yeah, sort of a proxy for my recall, my memories, and a little bit of a stand-in too. I reluctantly came to realize that I needed to voice this film. It was really hard to explain why an ark is going up in a field in Maine, and then all these peripatetic journeys around the world, without somebody's sensibility really driving it. Probably 10 years ago, I vowed to never do the voiceover thing again and put myself in the movie.

S&F: Why?

IC: Because I felt like I didn't really nail it [at the time], and it wasn't really me, and it felt very much like a construct and a crutch. And so, I think I came around to it with this film only because I felt like I could do it in a new way. And I think I did, whether the audience notices or cares or not, when I watch the film, I feel like I found my voice.

S&F: Yeah, it feels personal in a way.

IC: Archives are personal. I think there might have been a sort of misleading sterility to the film, if it didn't have a personal perspective. No archive is objective, so let's stop pretending that it is.

Still from THE ARC OF OBLIVION, courtesy of Sandbox Films and Wicked Delicate

S&F: I'm curious about your relationship to science and to scientists, and how you chose the path you follow in the film.

IC: I've been in a headspace these past few years of trying to really rethink how science is explored on screen. Yeah. I don't say communicated, because I think that word has become loaded or problematic in some ways. It has certain connotations that maybe are dragging us as filmmakers down a little bit. So I'm in a headspace where I'm trying to figure out: How can I share with audiences the feeling I get when I'm bombing around with scientists, which is a feeling of questioning and wonder and surprise and serendipity, and unexpected twists and turns. And those are things that I think should be part of the science film experience for the audience, even if it comes at the expense of some of the things we previously looked to science films for, like tidy explainers and delivery of encyclopedic numbers of facts, and profiles of grand discoveries, et cetera, et cetera. What I understand from many scientists I've spoken to, the allure of science is not only that hope that you'll make a great big discovery and deliver a tidy package to the world, but that everyday experience of pursuing wonder. With this film's constellation of topics, it seemed like I had an opportunity to share with audiences, what now seems very obvious, but sort of blew my mind and changed my way of seeing the world when it sunk in, which is this idea that the world around us is an archive. The universe is an archive. Not in a dusty, old, predictable sense, but in the sense of being filled with stories and mysteries.

That's one of the reasons I front-loaded in the film this idea that the natural world–tree rings and rock layers, ice cores–is an archive, because I wanted that to be the spiritual context for the movie. That's part of what science means to me. The idea that the process of science or the tools and training of science arm you with this ability to see the world in a very new way, in the same way that poetry can.

If I may, the other thing... And I haven't really figured out how to put this into words yet, but it's been coalescing over these past few projects, is I've been trying to change the way I think about depicting science on film. Part of that is not just regurgitating what I see out in the world, but it's treating the films themselves as experiments, not scientific experiments with X, Y variables, but as open-ended, wondrous journeys. That was part of the underpinning of THE MOST UNKNOWN; let's set up this thing and see what happens, and maybe that will refresh our gaze of science. I think some of the same spirit underpins The Arc of Oblivion; this idea of, I'm gonna participate in this story, and intervene and bring people interesting places, and in that way try to scratch at something a little more deeply than just illustrating some great facts that you might be able to see on Wikipedia anyway.

Still from THE ARC OF OBLIVION, courtesy of Sandbox Films and Wicked Delicate

S&F: How to make science dramatic using the moving image medium sounds like one of the things you're grappling with.

IC: The way I think about it is that there are different ways of translating science. There are filmmakers who really excel at condensing difficult ideas or visualizing un-visualizable ideas, and it's beautiful, and I love that–there's a kind of magic to that. I think this is a different type of translation. And I'm still figuring it out. I've started forcing myself to think about a text card or narration, in the beginning of the film, and [how it] just puts me in a different headspace rather than like, you know, I'm going to prove this thing that I already thought. This is an open-ended journey. I want to communicate that to the audience, but I also need to keep myself in that headspace, because there's an enormous amount of momentum going to pushing you in the other direction [when making a film].

S&F: Can you talk a little bit about who your main collaborators were, and how it was getting them on board with that experimental conceit or mindset?

IC: One of my main collaborators was my brother, who is a poet by training, but has always played music and has been dipping into music more recently, the past three or four years. I asked him if he had any sample [tracks] that I could use in a in a work sample early on where I was trying to figure out the tone of the film. And he said: I've actually been folding archival materials into the music. He didn't even know what the movie I was working on was about! There was something sort of lovely about the idea that as brothers we were both at this point in our lives where we have kids, and we're both grappling with that growing body of archives, but also, we have older parents and have been digging through their materials. So, there was this personal impetus to entangle ourselves in archival materials.

Another collaboration was with my friend Melissa McClung, who did the animations for the film. We decided to shift how we [filmmakers] usually create animations. [We suggested,] why don't you just be part of our journey? We'll let the animation experiments nudge the film in different ways. Melissa was really helpful in nudging the film's whimsy along because a lot of her ideas are sort of beautifully bananas. We tried all sorts of things. We tried to animate as the ark was being built so we would have like hard drives climbing all over the ark and it was too difficult to control the light... That process of treating the animations as an early, integral part of the film's journey was really helpful in finding the tone and style.

Our producers were beautifully imaginative in the way they would research things. The first wave of research was where we had to go through this process of imagining somebody had hired us to make a film about human memory, archives, impermanence, what does that film look like? It was interesting and fascinating, but somehow it didn't feel right. It didn't feel related to the ark, it didn't feel tonally like the film we wanted to make. So, we pushed past that to another level of trying to find slightly more unpredictable corners of the research world that could help the film maintain its spirit of surprise, which is part of what I love about archives. If you were thumbing through the archive of the planet Earth, what would you stumble upon?

S&F: It's treasure hunting.

IC: Yeah. You know, at first, I wanted to let our journeys be born out of the physical materials of the ark. After it went on though, it was like, well, the ark is still being made out of wood. What do we, talk about the nails? Eventually we had to move on from that but keep coming back to the sawdust.

S&F: Speaking of the ark, how are your parents?

IC: My dad designed the ark, he sort of moonlit as an architect while he was a photography teacher. He's retired, so he loved a quirky design project. It's not often that a client comes to you and says, I'll pay you no money, dad, and can you design me an ark? And then, can I build this in your field? But he wasn't skeptical at all, which, maybe, is just he knows me.

I think there are lingering questions about what will become of it. I wondered if it would become obvious at some point what its future purpose would be or should be. And the closest I got, which I talked about in the film, is the ark is this space for kind of tangling with memories. It's a place where we made the film, the place where we interviewed people, a place where we made all the animations–it's the set. So if we really internalize that any vessel cannot be a permanent, foolproof repository for our dreams and our records and our archives, then what is it good for? It's good for immersing ourselves in them and having what fun we can while we can. Although Greg and Jess [the executive producers] want to flip it and make it into an Airbnb.

S&F: Totally.

IC: It's probably a better way of making money from the film than as a film, let's be honest. [laughs] It's a tough marketplace out there, but dang, people love Airbnb.

♦

• A Volcanic Love Story: Sara Dosa on FIRE OF LOVE
• Director Interview: Molly McGlynn on FITTING IN
• Director Interview: Marcus Lindeen on THE RAFT

Science & Film: HERE has such a specific feel that I think comes in part from the landscapes you bring into focus. Where did you film, and how did that figure into the narrative for you?

Bas Devos: Very often locations are not necessarily starting points, but I really like to write about places that I know and people that I know—people who I love and places that I love. Very quickly in the writing process, I started to think about where am I going to film? What places would I like to film? I think this is also something that is somewhat overlooked in filmmaking, this desire to film specific things, specific places, as a reason to make films.

Because I go about my daily life so much on foot and by bike, and so little by car, because I can't drive a car and I depend on other people, I really tend to also focus on my close surroundings. A lot of the locations you see in the film are within walking distance of where I live, which is both embarrassing, but also, for me, very pleasant. It's just really nice to film things you know. The main locations are our center of Brussels, the city where I live. And then there's a region between Brussels and the nearest next town, which in the film is referred to, because that's where Stefan has to go pick up his car. There's a train track between Brussels and this town, and alongside this train track, where I filmed most of the film.

S&F: I feel like there's an unexpected lushness of the environment there.

BD: Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of these parks in Brussels and there's quite a lot of green and also some of these strangely unkept zones that are halfway between swampy areas and park. This particular zone in the film is a somewhat toxic place because it's directly next to the train tracks and they use a lot of chemicals to keep the green away from the train tracks because of all kinds of possible dangers of overgrown tracks. Water runs down and it ends up often in these places directly next to the train tracks, so even though the ground is really disturbed, and it's a very wounded place, there is still so much resilient green. This is what attracted me a lot. It's this strange place where the wildness of nature and just people walking dogs meet. It also has a plateau from which you can see quite far. So yeah, it's a place I know very well, it's where I often go for walks out on my own, so it felt very logical that this would be part of the story.

Liyo Gong and Stefan Gota in HERE. Courtesy of Cinema Guild.

S&F: It seems to me like that word resiliency is key to the characters and maybe what they get from being in that environment.

BD: Yeah, with all the green it's like the city can't hold it back, moss is everywhere. This potential is something that I wanted to somehow tap into and make part of this film.

S&F: You have a character who is a bryologist, how did you find out about this profession, and did you work with anyone on the film who helped with those specifics?

BD: I was reading this book by Anna Tsing called The Mushroom at the End of the World, which I thought was so amazing. I think it must have been there that I read about Robin Wall Kimmerer, a bryologist, scientist, teacher, and writer in such a pleasant and beautiful way about different kinds of knowledge and different kinds of intelligences. She wrote a small book called Gathering Moss, which is such a nice introduction for people who are not scientific, like me, into not only the scientific worth of moss but also the strange and intricate link between moss and us being here today. She eloquently explains how moss is our direct forefather, because it was the first plant to grow on land, and so the creator of oxygen through photosynthesis. I thought that was already so amazing that this tiny, tiny plant is our kin. I just remember reading this and feeling that she woke this desire in me to see moss, and then I was like, bryologist, there must be more than one. It turns out there are some in Belgium, but I happened to meet most likely the kindest of them all, a man named Geert Raeymaekers. I contacted him, I explained that I wrote about moss, but had no clue whether it made much sense. I wanted to also see moss for myself the way that a bryologist would see it, so he took me to the location where we shot the film. We looked at moss together, and I had this strange moment where I went, like, ah, this is so nice. If only a fifth of what I'm feeling now can be transmitted through the film, that would already be amazing. For me, it was something transformative to feel intimate with a plant, in a way, and to really understand a little bit more how we are just humans and how there is so much more intelligence that we discard.

S&F: How did you work with your cinematographer on the shifting perspective we see in the film?

BD: We have a longer history, it's not the first film we have done together. There is relatively little preparation, we think more in broad strokes. One of the really clear broad strokes for me was that this film would be about zooming in without actually making a zoom shot. [It would be about] working in different scales, coming closer and closer—the way that we open with a construction site, and then only after a couple of scenes, we find the main character and slowly also move into the even smaller world of the mosses. So that was a guideline.

We of course knew that to film such a small plant you need specific kinds of lenses, you can't just film it with any lens, you need macro lenses that are capable of catching such a such a near object. So, there was of course some technical preparation, but mainly, we just went out and we looked and tried to see a little bit in the way that I saw when I went out for the first time. We were trying to find a way of bringing this nature, which normally works as sort of background, but to bring that to the foreground and to make it really present in the film, not just nice images. We don't care for nice images, we care a lot about the right image. This was a more horizontal way of filmmaking in which everything has the same worth, so that not only the characters and not only the dialogue, or not only the plot, but also the sound design and the cinematography, and the background would become as important. This was a goal, but one that made me very unsure, like, can we do it?

Liyo Gong and Stefan Gota in HERE. Courtesy of Cinema Guild.

S&F: I'm curious if in any of your future projects you want to carry these ideas or modes of working forward?

BD: It's so hard to talk about future projects because I feel that I'm in this stage where everything is still very open and can still change and take many different directions. But I think there is a way of seeing that I have been slowly developing not only in the last film, but also with the films I made before, that always made me a little bit unsure. But in a way, this film reassured me in that kind of way of seeing, in that more horizontal filmmaking. And so, hard to say, but I think it would be for me difficult now not to continue on this path of looking at the world as a place where we're man is only man. That's a lot, that's amazing, but there is so much more. And to continue thinking about narratives that speak about connection, and collaboration, instead of conflict. I think there is a lot to gain, and I think there are a lot of stories untold. Of course, I'm not the only filmmaker thinking that way. But still, it feels somewhat like an uphill battle when I see what kind of films get traction, and what nice films sometimes disappear through the cracks.

♦

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• KING COAL Director Elaine McMillion Sheldon
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Nearly all of the films below will make their world premiere, including Johan Renck’s SPACEMAN, his first feature since winning an Emmy for the limited series CHERNOBYL. Based on Jaroslav Kalfa’s novel Spaceman of Bohemia, the film boasts a star-studded cast including Adam Sandler, Carrie Mulligan, Paul Dano, and Isabella Rossellini. Sandler plays an astronaut several months into a solitary space mission.

Anna Cornudella Castro’s THE HUMAN HIBERNATION, another world premiere, has a more terrestrial focus. Castro’s debut film challenges anthropocentrism in its fictional contemplation of how different life on Earth might be, were humans to hibernate each winter as many species do. Sloan Science & Film will be in attendance at the Berlinale, so check back for coverage.

COMPETITION

ANOTHER END. Dir. Piero Messina. World Premiere. “In the near future, a new technology places the consciousness of a dead person back into a living body in an attempt to ease the grief of separation and grant the bereft a little extra time to say goodbye.”

ARCHITECTON. Dir. Victor Kossakovsky. World Premiere. “A visually powerful journey into the realm of materials from which human dwellings are made: concrete and its predecessor, stone. Victor Kossakovsky’s cinematic essay explores the fundamental question: How will we inhabit the world of tomorrow?”

GLORIA!. Dir. Margherita Vicario. World Premiere. “Venice in the year 1800. What happens when a decrepit old music school for girls receives a newly invented ‘music machine’ that everyone calls the ‘pianoforte’? Will it be the vehicle to freedom for five blossoming young musicians?”

BERLINALE SPECIAL

AT AVERROES & ROSA PARKS. Dir. Nicolas Philibert. World Premiere. “A psychiatric clinic in Paris. Individual interviews and patient-carer meetings reveal a form of psychiatry that gives more space to the patients’ words. Little by little, the door to each of their worlds opens wider.”

CHIME. Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa. World Premiere. “Tashiro, a student at a culinary school, hears voices in his head. His teacher, Matsuoka, remains unconcerned. But then Tashiro claims that half of his brain has been replaced by a machine.”

SPACEMAN. Dir. Johan Renck. World Premiere. “Jacob, an astronaut, has been on a space mission for months. He realizes that his wife might not be waiting for him once he returns to Earth. In his desperation, he turns for help to a mysterious creature lurking deep in the bowels of his spaceship.”

Still from SPACEMAN. Courtesy of Berlinale.

BERLINALE SHORTS

THE MOON ALSO RISES. Dir. Yuyan Wang. World Premiere. “Artificial moons are going to be launched into space to eliminate the difference between day and night. An elderly couple retreats into the increasing darkness of their apartment, illuminated by digital devices.”

Still from THE MOON ALSO RISES. Courtesy of Berlinale.

TAKO TSUBO. Dir. Fanny Sorgo, Eva Pedroza. World Premiere. “Mr. Ham decides to have his heart removed to free himself from his complicated emotions. The doctor assures him that, in this day and age, this procedure no longer poses a problem.”

FORUM

TRUE CHRONICLES OF THE BLIDA JOINVILLE PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL IN THE LAST CENTURY. Dir. Abdenour Zahzah. World Premiere. “Frantz Fanon was a renowned politician and decolonialization activist. This feature focuses on his visionary social therapy methods during his time as a psychiatrist in Algeria from 1953 to 1956. A piece of sober anti-racism.”

THE HUMAN HIBERNATION. Dir. Anna Cornudella Castro. World Premiere. “A brother and sister are hibernating. Only the sister wakes up. Human hibernation blurs the boundary between people and animals. A thought experiment equal parts sci-fi and meditation, shot in searing images.”

WELL ORDERED NATURE. Dir. Eva C. Heldmann. World Premiere. “Free-floating yet rigorously structured, this essay film presents botanist and educationalist Catharina Helena Dörrien and her time in Orange-Nassau in the 18th century. Via regulations and floral formulas, nature philosophy and social policy converge.”

Still from WELL ORDERED NATURE. Courtesy of Berlinale.

THE EDITORIAL OFFICE. Dir. Roman Bondarchuk. World Premiere. “Young biologist Jura still lives with his mum and witnesses arson while looking for marmots on the Kherson steppe. As he tries to make what happened public, he ends up entangled in shady affairs. A surreal, self-critical satire on media and politics.”

THE INVISIBLE ZOO. Dir. Romuald Karmakar. World Premiere. “Across the seasons, the film gives an account of life and work and the animals and visitors at Zurich Zoo, an institution that is one of the leading zoological gardens in Europe. Animals in their cages, humans in the cinema. What lies between them?”

FORUM EXPANDED - SHORT-LENGTH

FOR HERE AM I SITTING IN A TIN CAN FAR ABOVE THE WORLD. Dir. Gala Hernández López. World Premiere. “A woman dreams of a future economic crisis affecting the cryptocurrency market. Thousands have been cryogenised, awaiting better times. Are they suspended, or are they falling into the void?”

GRANDMAMAUNTSISTERCAT. Dir. Zuza Banasińska. International Premiere. “Created from archival materials from communist Poland, the film tells the story of a multispecies matriarchal family through the eyes of a child grappling with the reproduction of ideological and representational systems.”

O SEEKER. Dir. Gavati Wad. World Premiere. “In a post-pandemic world, this 16mm film examines science, politics, spirituality and superstition in India as it pieces together a puzzle of unresolved questions through conversations about grief, loss and absurd events, both real and imagined.”

FORUM EXPANDED - MID-LENGTH

BARRUNTO. Dir. Emilia Beatriz. World Premiere. “BARRUNTO is a speculative fiction that takes place in a future of the past, in a present ruptured now. Its far-reaching network of affinities spans from Puerto Rico to Scotland, from the land to the bottom of the sea, and all the way to planet Uranus.”

NANACATEPEC. Dir. Elena Pardo, Azucena Losana. World Premiere. “A 16mm film performance draws inspiration from the Nanacatepec, a rock traversed by a network that extends without a defined shape. Its fruits, in the form of mushrooms, serve as creators and transformers of everything in the world.”

Still from NANACATEPEC. Courtesy of Berlinale.

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FITTING IN was a 2023 Toronto International Film Festival official selection, and was the inaugural film spotlighted by the Sloan Science on Film Showcase, a component of Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s partnership with Toronto International Film Festival, launched in 2023.

Ahead of the film’s release, we spoke with writer/director Molly McGlynn about her personal experience being diagnosed with MRKH, updating the story for Gen Z and how the dialogue around MRKH has changed over the past two decades.

Sloan Science & Film: I understand the film is inspired by your own experience with MRKH. Why did you want to tell this story now?

Molly McGlynn: I was diagnosed with MRKH syndrome when I was 16 years old, over 20 years ago. I always knew that because I'm a filmmaker who had this really specific experience, I had to tell the story at some point but [it] scared the shit out of me. It was always, ‘One day, one day, one day, I'll get the nerve to do it.’ I knew I only had one shot, so I wanted to make sure that I was ready to tackle it.

I made a feature that came out in 2017 called MARY GOES ROUND and had directed a lot of television, so I felt like my chops as a director had strengthened. It was just a feeling in my gut, especially during the pandemic when I think we all had reckonings about what's important and what kind of work we want to make. I'm like, ‘This could all go tomorrow. What do you want to say?’

S&F: The scenes in which Lindy interacts with doctors are very evocative. They convey how heavily bedside manner and use of medical terminology can impact the personal experience of a diagnosis. Can you speak about how the language around MRKH has impacted you and how it's changed over the past 20 years?

MM: At the time I was diagnosed, the bedside manner was extremely lacking, and a lot of the terminology emphasized a lack or a problem to be corrected. None of our bodies are problems to be corrected. There didn't seem to be a lot of choice. It was, ‘Here is the issue. Here are some dilators so you can have sex, presumably with a man.’ I’ve experienced a lot of presumption. I hope now, having had conversations with people in the medical field who have seen the film, there’s progress in terms of presenting someone with options of things to do. And crucially, that you don't have to do anything. I hope that medical professionals look at the emotional and psychological well-being of a patient before pushing them to do very invasive treatment, surgical or manual. Culturally, we're always in correction mode instead of acceptance mode. The patient is a whole person. It's just not a body.

S&F: I am curious about how shifting this story 20 years ahead meant accounting for Gen Z’s very different relationship with technology. Lindy has the opportunity to poke around the internet and research her condition before sharing it with her loved ones, for instance. She learns about Jax [KI Griffin] from their YouTube videos before they bond in real life.

MM: Initially I did want to make it, no pun intended, a period film and set it in the 2000s. It's expensive to do that though. You must acknowledge the role of technology and social media in a contemporary film about teenagers, but I didn't want it to be overwhelming.

S&F: Given your own knowledge about the subject, did you choose to work with any consultants, medical or otherwise?

MM: I consulted with intersex organizations and MRKH organizations, which read drafts of the script and gave feedback. Much is from my own experience and research, but I wanted to make sure it was accurate.

S&F: Though Lindy’s condition is very rare, you tap into several themes universal to that stage of life. Do you see this as a coming-of-age film?

MM: Even though this is about my experience in my body, I think anyone who has a body at some point has felt like it is not doing what they want. Or it's different than that of other people and you're insecure about that. Anyone can relate to that on an emotional level.

S&F: Have any audience reactions surprised or delighted you since the film began playing at festivals?

MM: It's been wild. I’ve had a range. Gynecologists, teachers, young Gen Z folks. After TIFF, this young woman sent me a long, beautiful message saying she came to the movie with ‘her Jax' and they’d never seen their friendship on screen before. That really moved me. This chic woman in her 70s came up to me wearing a Chanel suit and said she found it fabulous because these things weren’t talked about in her day.

It's a different experience, but a man who looked to be someone’s dad said he didn't really know what to expect but he thought it was a great and he’d tell his friends to watch it. I said, ‘Sir, I really appreciate that because so much focus is on the personal experience and being a female filmmaker, I worry that what I've crafted will be interpreted as a ‘Dear Diary’ entry as opposed to something that a lot of people put thought and craft behind.’ That guy just made my day.

S&F: I hope that you hear from many more like him on February 2nd when the film is out. Anything else you’d like to share with our readers before we conclude?

MM: Yes. This is an indie film and I want to encourage people to see it, not because I want them to see it, but because when you go and support a film, money talks. If you believe that stories from perspectives you haven't seen before need to be told, you need to support those films. It's not just for me, but for other people too.

♦

• Listening to Women: DEAD RINGERS Consultant Erin Guerriero
• Sloan Projects at TIFF
• Meet the Filmmaker: Sloan Grantee Cole Smith

How did you land on the subject of moths?

AD: We were in the Himalayas making a film on snow leopard habitats. We had gone for a long trek, and we came to a food joint, where Mansi [Mungee] was sitting at a table nearby. And we got to talking. She said, I work in this incredible place [studying] moths. She described this scene of lights coming on and thousands of insects rushing in and the screen slowly filling up. It just sounded like an amazing cinematic idea. It seemed very much like my childhood where I lived in Andaman in the south of India, where there used to be an outdoor cinema. People used to come with 35mm projectors and they used to put up these screens and we as kids would rush out to see what was happening. It evoked that sensation in both of us, and we felt, oh, let's go to this place and check it out.

How and why did you film the moths in this audiovisually immersive way?

AD: We have been feeling, especially post pandemic, especially looking at my children, that their connection with nature or the outdoors is slowly getting disconnected. And somehow this has been in the back of our mind, what's going on. So we wanted to tell a story where we can reconnect with nature and situate human beings as one of the many creatures or organisms who inhabit this world. That informed our cinematic language, that idea of immersion. Not to extract the human being out of nature using telephoto lenses, but to show how human beings working in the forest are really small in that immense expanse.

AS: And similarly, there is a way of looking at nature and creatures by isolating them and making the background blurred, and this is exactly what we avoided. And it all had to be done very subtly without disrupting the work of the scientists. They were using lights anyway so we just enhanced the light a little bit so that our cameras could get enough depth of field, so that we don't have this thing that only one part of the moth is in focus and the rest of the moths are out of focus. That was a very conscious decision not to have this isolation effect, because that for us was the philosophical core of the film. The sound design, the visual language, everything is linked to the core idea of what Anirban was saying about scale: how we shift this balance in which we keep focusing on the human story and animals and nature are in the background. How can the viewer, by just looking at the moths, not listening to any human voice, make their own connection with the insect, without in any way anthropomorphizing them?

What kind of microphone setup did you use to record the lovely soundscapes?

AD: Our experience of an image is influenced by the sound that we hear. With immersive sound, you experience more, you can imagine what is beyond the two dimensional-image that you see. How do we get the audience to feel what it was like when we stood there in the forest when Mansi and Bicki were working? So, we had mono mics to record the characters and the specific sounds. We had stereophonic mics, and also multiple lapel mics, which were clipped to the moth screen, so we could hear the tac-tac-tac of the moths hitting the screen. And we had a 5.1 microphone there to create the ambience bed. All of this we brought together in the Atmos mix. The whole idea was to transport you to that location, for you to be with us as we were watching and hearing.

What were the challenges of filming in this forest environment?

AS: The most beautiful part of this and the most challenging part was that it's really far out. It's a very precious and unique forest where many people don't go. So it's very, very challenging because of the rain and the cold. The moisture was a huge issue for our lenses, the fogging, and protecting the sound equipment from the rain. It could be sunny and then in five minutes, it would be pouring. But the interesting thing is that the scientists don't stop their work for the rain—because the moths don't stop! That's why we included that scene in which it's pouring and they're still taking photographs. There's no break.

AD: And we didn't want to run a generator inside this precious forest. So we had huge truck batteries to power our equipment so that there was no noise pollution or any pollution of the natural environment. And we were very clear that the color temperature of the light that Mansi was using would not change—they had a particular wavelength of UV light [they were using]. So we had to spend a lot of time finding the perfect light and illuminated it just a little more. And then we could get a little exposure to our images.

Filmmakers Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan, courtesy of Sundance Institute

What do you call the sheets the moths land on?

AD: They call it the moth screen. And it's incredible because it's made with the fabric that is used to stitch your shirt. It's a simple fabric, and each grid has measurements that they use to measure the moths later. So that is done with very simple things, which really charmed us.

What did you learn about moths in observing Mansi’s study?

AS: The hawk moths were one of the easiest to identify because they have this triangular shape and they're more sturdy than some of the other delicate-looking ones. That's something now we can do really easily, because Mansi trained us. There's this whole life being enacted on that screen, which we still find fascinating even when we were watching the film during the sound mix. We were amazed by just the diversity in sizes and shapes and the delicacy of their wings, and even now we notice a moth that we haven't seen before or doing something, you know, knocking another one off. I think that all affects their ability to fly. So in the study that Mansi is doing, it's specifically for hawk moths, but what will happen to more frail moths because their ability to fly is even less? If there's even a marginal change in temperature, then they will be affected much more even than hawk moths.

But this lab’s work is ongoing. Mansi’s mentor is Ramana Athreya, and his biodiversity lab continues with the quest. What he always says is that we find newer questions to ask. We’re very far from learning even about all the moths in that particular forest, because thousands of species there have been described, but they estimate that there are ten times more. It's on par with the Amazon in terms of biodiversity.

I liked how you showed Mansi’s concentration—we’re observing someone observing. And the grunt work of science.

AD: Yes. Whether it's science or in sports, it's actually this process: you do the same thing day in and day out. And in science, a lot of this is about daily rigor. You get up, you just go and put up the screen, and you photograph. Some days you have a good day, some days you don't have a good day. But you get up and do it. This is something that we really liked, because how do you tell a story or make a film about something which is so repetitive? It's a big challenge as a filmmaker. Then what happens is you start looking at things that you would not otherwise notice, which was the drama on the screen. So as we were filming, we felt this film is also talking to us about looking at things with more attention, more detail. That’s something that we are losing with our devices: we are swiping, we are looking at reels. It's all about such immediate reaction to things. Here was something that you had to wait for. And that was philosophically very appealing to us.

AS: And we try to capture that sense that even though you may be a grant scientist from a city, once you come to this location, you have to get into the mud and move rocks, or you just have to sit huddled up waiting for the moths to come. You're really at the mercy of nature. To do fieldwork in this landscape is difficult. It's not only about the result.

I also kept wondering what the forest smells must be like.

AD: Oh it’s very, very, very, very, very different. When you are on a more walkable surface, it's different from when you go into the forest, inside the canopy, where you smell all kinds of moss and earth. The smell changes with elevation as well. And if you are there at a certain time, there is a bloom of rhododendron and then you start smelling the flowers.

Did you have any reference points in cinema for what you wanted to achieve? I thought of Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

AD: Well, you got it! [laughter] Yes, we are very inspired by Apichatpong.

AS: One filmmaker who is a great inspiration in terms of treatment, story, drama, character, is Yasujiro Ozu. Because he leaves out so much of the drama, in a way. So what happens in just ordinary conversations becomes so deep and poignant. So we were really inspired by that in trying to understand what little we do of the human characters in the film through their dialogue, which seem really mundane. You know, “It's going to rain today,” this sort of thing. And then one guy says, “You know, my clothes are torn, I don't have any clothes to wear tomorrow.” And I think looking at these really mundane dialogues offered a deeper sense of the human condition, which Ozu inspired. And of course Apichatpong Weerasethakul, for this mystical quality which he brings to observing nature. And Tsai Mingliang!

AD: What we like about Apichatpong, Ozu, and Tsai Mingliang, is how they use time in cinema. And I think the way we look at things is somewhat dictated by giving that time for you to get beyond the obvious. When I take my audience a little further than that, they start watching and hearing more, because I haven't cut the shot. Then you get a little uncomfortable in the beginning but slowly you settle down and you start hearing and seeing and then feeling more. And Anu and I are both very inspired by music. We feel that cinema can achieve a quality like a beautiful piece of music that you go and hear again and again.

For the record, why do moths go to the light?

AS: That's a question that has not been answered satisfactorily. There is something in that they get attracted to the moon and that helps them navigate. So when the moon is not there, they go towards the light. But there's no very good explanation of why they get attracted to light. Anirban mentioned about the wavelength of the light, and how through trial and error they've managed to figure out the right mix of UV and normal light to attract moths. I think that must have something to do with the wavelength of the moonlight. But as is said in the film, their lights work well only when the moonlight is not there.

It's a phenomenon that is described in Indian poetry. When you want to say that somebody is attracted to somebody, you say it's like a moth to a light.

♦

• Director Interview: Ian Cheney on THE ARC OF OBLIVION
• Mindaugas Survila on THE ANCIENT WOODS
• Bas Devos's HERE

Science & Film: Can you speak a bit about what your familiarity was with Gross National Happiness before making this film, and what it means in Bhutan?

Arun Bhattarai: For me, Gross National Happiness is a very familiar topic, because I actually grew up listening to GNH in my classroom. I was studying Gross National Happiness, I was listening to the king's speeches about Gross National Happiness, but I never thought too much about it at the time. When I actually started going out of Bhutan, I realized that everybody associates Bhutan with this happy country and GNH. That was actually the beginning of this idea for this film. Dorottya and I did our previous film together, and then we were traveling and every Q&A somebody would ask about this Gross National Happiness. Bhutan is often exoticized as the last Shangri-La, and we wanted to go behind this happy image of Bhutan.

Dorottya Zurbó: We had already made a film together in Bhutan, THE NEXT GUARDIAN, and that was the first time we witnessed two happiness agents, surveyors, conducting the survey with our previous protagonists. We were very impressed by how engaging a conversation they were having, and how much people were enjoying sharing their innermost feelings: how satisfied they are, what are their dreams, what household items they have, what they are struggling with, and we thought that there was a nice energy. At the same time, we also felt that it was kind of a nice extra touch that [the story was] government officials going around the country and trying to measure subjective life experiences, and from the data that they were collecting, they try to use that for policymaking and implementing developments in the country.

Still from AGENT OF HAPPINESS, courtesy of the filmmakers.

S&F: What if people aren’t truthful, wouldn’t that skew policy?

DZ: You never know how honest the people are. But what was really interesting in our experience was that somehow the people were genuinely trying to be very thorough, and very honest, and many times they said that no one really asked these questions of them before. They have kind of a genuine trust towards their government and towards the king. I think that gave a special atmosphere to the survey.

AB: I think they see it as an opportunity to express themselves. For example, you see the teenage girl Yangka who is living in the village with her mom who has alcohol problems. She never shared these thoughts [that we hear in the film] with anyone, not even with her closest friends. When these happiness agents were there and were actually asking her these questions, it kind of gave her a chance to talk about her deeper feelings. The survey itself is fairly complicated, and many of the questions don't actually make sense, I mean, you can't really measure people's happiness. That's what we are also trying to see in the film. We are trying to use this survey as a device to enter into people's lives.

DZ: We're playing with this idea in the film: can we transform a survey like that into numbers? Can we calculate a certain happiness index or happiness profile? An overall happiness index of the country? It is kind of obviously like measuring GDP. Bhutan was trying to transform—they measure happiness instead of GDP.

AB: There are some indicators [in the survey] which are kind of unique. You talk about community vitality, about spirituality as well, environmental protection. Gross National Happiness is based on four pillars: one is good governance, one is sustainable development, protection of environment, and protection of cultural values. Under that there are these nine indicators. It's a good compass, let's say, for development. It's something that you look at and it's like the North Star. But I think what's more important is the process of trying to go and find out when people are happy or not.

DZ: At the end, the idea of the film was that we have these statistics, the data that the country is very proud of, and spends a lot of time calculating. But to translate it into cinematic language, what is behind those numbers? What are those confessions, stories, feelings?

Still from AGENT OF HAPPINESS, courtesy of the filmmakers.

S&F: As filmmakers, you were accompanying these agents on a survey that is public but, as you're saying, is also very intimate where people are sharing thoughts that they haven't even shared with family members. Were participants generally open to your presence? Were you worried about how it might change the survey, or the results?

AB: Yeah, we were worried about it. We were always following Amber and Guna and we were very visible, but initially we would let them talk and then be comfortable and then we would say: we have been following them for months, and just feel comfortable and be yourself.

DZ: We were always saying that if they don't want to be filmed then it's fine, or if there are certain sections or questions they feel are too intimate, then we are not going to record. We wanted to give them the freedom to stop us anytime.

AB: With the side characters like Dechen and Yangka and Tashi and Tshering, we went back to them a lot after the happiness agents left, building a relationship with them, because with them we were shooting more observational moments from their lives. That could evolve more as a deeper relationship.

Behind the Scenes of AGENT OF HAPPINESS, courtesy of the filmmakers.

♦

• Director Interview: ALL THAT BREATHES
• KING COAL Director Elaine McMillion Sheldon
• Internet Comes To Bhutan: SING ME A SONG

Science & Film: What was your starting place with this story?

Moritz Riesewieck: In 2018, which was also the year of the premiere of our previous film, THE CLEANERS, we discovered a website stating: you can become virtually immortal. We were like, this sounds like a cheap scam, what's behind it? We became curious and we learned that the founder of this company was an MIT fellow, but we learned that his [statement] was back then kind of an empty promise. Researching this emerging technology that was using the data of the living to then make an avatar of them as soon as they have passed, he didn't manage to fulfill this promise. He had to disappoint, he said, like 30,000 people who were on the waitlist. We couldn't check that [number]. But a lot of people were in existential crisis moments: people who were severely ill and had to die soon themselves, or their loved ones were going to [die]. It shocked us that he was so easily playing with the feelings of people in such an existential crisis. We noticed that there were other startups out there, which started to appear with similar promises, and we followed them.

We were privileged to be there when they tried the first avatars and bots with their first clients, their guinea pigs so to speak, and sometimes it was very disturbing to see how much they fell for it, and other times, it didn't work at all. We continued meeting both the clients as well as the founders of these startups, and then as we all know, there was this massive development in artificial intelligence and in similar technologies like voice synthesis and visual cloning, and what formerly was an empty promise became more and more possible and convincing. We were really surprised at how far this went. Now we are at this moment where something which sounds like a BLACK MIRROR episode is finally reality, which is still stunning for us.

S&F: Do either of you see a connection between your previous film, THE CLEANERS, and ETERNAL YOU?

Hans Block: We are super interested in these technological topics. It's a challenge for us to make something which is invisible, visible. For example, artificial intelligence is very hard to capture. To translate that into a film, it’s an immense power. That's what we realized after we made THE CLEANERS, that some of the audience for the first time understood what the consequences of using social media are, for example. There are always humans behind every great technology, and we tried to capture that story. That was also the starting point and the goal for this film, to make something which is really hard to capture visible. Artificial intelligence is such a huge term. We tried to make something very abstract very concrete, so that we can talk about it and so that we can open a discussion about very concrete questions we need to discuss in society. We are so happy to be here [at Sundance] because we know the film will find a broader audience and we can open a big discussion.

Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck. Photos by Konrad Waldmann, courtesy of Sundance Institute.

S&F: Can you speak a bit about your approach to your subjects?

MR: What's most important for us, in both films, is that we put the humans in the center of all. We don't want to make a film about an emerging technology. Our interest is to explore and understand better the impact of the technology on humans, on their psyche, on their behavior, on their belief system, and on their ideology. On the sides of the developers of this technology, what kind of ideology do they put into the programming, for example? At the very beginning of this research, a lot of people asked us, what's your opinion on all of this? And we always refused to give an answer to that, because that's crucial for our kind of working, that we don't want to take a position too early in the process—we want to remain curious and open.

In the beginning, when we thought about this idea, none of us wanted to have an avatar of himself after death. We didn't even want that for our loved ones. But then, the more we accompanied the first users of this, the more we learned that actually you can be in very existential crises and you can have situations when you deeply mourn somebody, when you have this one open question that you definitely wanted to ask somebody and you couldn't, you didn't have the chance to say goodbye to somebody, and this haunts you so much that you fall for this chance to have a simulated conversation. There is nothing against trying it out. But what makes this technology so impactful and dangerous is, the more you interact with it, the more questions appear, the more irritations appear, the more you are provoked to always want to continue this conversation. That can become addictive. It can cause people to leave their real social life behind and turn towards this simulated life on the other side, because the AI is really good. As Sherry Turkle puts it in our film: it's really good at tricking you into thinking that there's a there there on the other side. We were really surprised at how seductive, how deceptive this technology can be, no matter how intelligent you are. That was important for us to show in our film, to surprise the audience who comes with an opinion, and then change that opinion or at least let them question their very strong opinion.

HB: I was thinking about the similarities between our two films, and the more I think about it, the more similarities come up. For example, for ETERNAL YOU we managed to accompany the first users of this technology. Also, we were the first ones accompanying the content moderators working and filtering [in THE CLEANERS]. So in a way, we are super early into these developments capturing, so to say, a historical moment. Also, in the postproduction process there are so many similarities with THE CLEANERS and ETERNAL YOU. After we did THE CLEANERS, we said to each other, we will never again do a story was so many characters, with so many layers, it was so complicated in the editing room to bring all that together. And here we are, again. There are so many characters, different experts, the users, the makers, and to bring all that together—we had hundreds of hours of material in the editing room. It took us more than half a year with two editing teams. But you need to do that, you need to take that time in order to get to the essence of what the film is about.

S&F: Did you glean any other insights into why people might be drawn to the promise of these applications?

MR: There are a lack of rituals about death in our societies today—many hundreds of millions of people in Western societies have turned away from religion. There is a big void, and these tech companies know really well how to fill this void, and how to offer a kind of narration of salvation, which has nothing to do with religion on the one hand, and on the other hand, actually makes kind of a goddess or god out of the AI, and then projects a lot of hope and dreams onto it.

S&F: What are some of the questions you're hoping people come away from your film with?

HB: We want to open up this debate about the extent to which AI developments should or should not penetrate our most intimate areas of life. What these highly emotional dialogues do to the psyche of the living is still largely unexplored, there are no studies around that, and our films tells the story of what might become one of the greatest human experiments of our time. We see in the numbers that the big tech industry is investing in so-called effective computing, developing machines that pretend to be capable of emotions.

MR: Some concrete questions one might have are: Do I want that for my loved ones? If you had the chance, would you take it? Christi, our protagonist in the film asks exactly that question. If you had the chance to talk to someone who died, would you take it? Everybody in the audience needs to respond to individually, right? And maybe the position changed after watching the film. There are also a lot of ethical questions like, who gets the chance to use the data of someone who died? Mostly, these are companies that have this data.

HB: When we started making the film, both of us could never imagine using a service like this. We were super skeptical. After meeting all these people, and after thinking about all of it, I'm a bit more open to it, to be honest. This is something which we really wish that the audience also experiences, going into the film with an opinion, and hopefully they go out of the movie different than when they came into the theater.

♦

• A.I. and SAG-AFTRA: Revisiting THE CONGRESS
• Made By Human: Sophie Barthes on THE POD GENERATION
• Director Interview: AND THE KING SAID, WHAT A FANTASTIC MACHINE

Filmmaking duo Sam and Andy Zuchero’s feature debut LOVE ME, starring Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun, received the 2024 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize. Selected by a jury of film and science professionals and presented to an outstanding feature film focusing on science or technology as a theme, or depicting a scientist, engineer, or mathematician as a major character, the prize includes a $25,000 cash award. The 2024 jury included Dr. Mandë Holford, Dr. Nia Imara, Matt Johnson (BLACKBERRY), Theresa Park (AFTER YANG), and Courtney Stephens (THE AMERICAN SECTOR).

“We are delighted to honor Sam and Andy Zuchero’s LOVE ME, an original and wildly imaginative film about the nature of human identity and our connection to each other in a post-human world mediated through artificial intelligence,” said Doron Weber, Vice President and Program Director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “In a year when Chris Nolan’s great-man-of-science biopic, OPPENHEIMER, based on the Sloan book American Prometheus, broke box office records and garnered acclaim, we are especially pleased to award three screenwriting fellowships to four outstanding writers who dramatize the unique obstacles and underappreciated contributions of exceptional women in science and technology. This year’s winners are wonderful additions to the nationwide Sloan film program and further proof of the vitality of our pioneering, two-decade partnership with Sundance.”

In addition to the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, recipients of three artist grants supporting projects in active development were announced. The filmmakers were celebrated at a reception in Park City, preceded by a talk entitled The Big Conversation: Screen of Consciousness, where the Zucheros discussed cinema’s portrayal of artificial intelligence with neuroscientist and clinical psychologist Dr. Heather Berlin.

Read more about all of the winning projects and the artists behind them below.

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Winner of the 2024 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize:

LOVE ME
Sam Zuchero, Andy Zuchero
Long after humanity’s extinction, a buoy and a satellite meet online and fall in love.

Winner of the 2024 Sloan Episodic Fellowship:

TEKTITE
Emily Everhard
In 1970, five elite female scientists arrive in the U.S. Virgin Islands to join NASA’s aquatic mission, “Tektite.” While NASA secretly psychologically surveils the aquanauts, the women must unite to survive life-threatening obstacles in the depths of the ocean.

TEKTITE previously won the 2023 Sloan Screenwriting Grant at Columbia University.

Winner of the 2024 Sloan Development Fellowship:

SATOSHI
Sara Crow, David Rafailedes
The potentially true story of a teenage anime-obsessed hacktivist who, after losing her scholarship to Stanford, returns home to Arizona to become the mysterious inventor of a new digital currency called Bitcoin.

SATOSHI was previously awarded the 2023 Sloan $100K First Feature Award at New York University’s Tisch Schol of the Arts.

Winner of 2024 the Sloan Commissioning Grant:

INVERSES
Lizzi Oyebode
The story of the Nazi takeover of the world’s leading university math department and the lone Jewish woman professor central to the resistance: Emmy Noether.

• Director Interview: Matt Johnson on BLACKBERRY
• Director Interview: Kogonada on AFTER YANG
• Peer Review: Frank Wilczek on OPPENHEIMER

Highlights include festival favorite Alice Rohrwacher’s LA CHIMERA, making its Dutch premiere. Isabella Rossellini co-stars in the 1980’s-set drama, which follows a lovelorn archaeologist (Josh O’Connor) caught up in the theft of historical artifacts to be sold on the black market.

Our selection also includes several world premieres, including Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn’s DREAM TEAM. Produced by Smudge Films (WE’RE ALL GOING TO WORLD’S FAIR), the mystery comedy follows a pair of Interpol agents investigating the death of a coral smuggler in Mexico circa 1997. IFFR programmer Michelle Carey compares the work to “an episode of BAYWATCH NIGHTS were it directed by Maya Deren.”

13 BOMBS. Dir. Angga Dwimas Sasongko. International Premiere. “Forcefully picked up by the Indonesian bureau of counter-terrorism to help trace a militant anti-bank outfit, Oscar and William, the nerdy co-founders of the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, find themselves caught up in an intricate cat-and-mouse game with a tech-savvy enemy.”

AIRE: JUST BREATHE. Dir. Leticia Tonos Paniagua. World Premiere. “In this visually dazzling and rare example of Caribbean sci-fi, a scientist’s attempts to preserve humanity’s future are threatened by the arrival of a stranger and a constantly developing artificial intelligence system exhibiting the pernicious traits of envy.”

Still from AIRE: JUST BREATHE. Courtesy of IFFR.

ANIMALIA PARADOXA. Dir. Niles Atallah. World Premiere. “Chilean multimedia artist Niles Atallah conjures a bleak, post-apocalyptic world in which a strange, human-amphibian creature struggles to survive. ANIMALIA PARADOXA poses the body as a site of experimentation: a meeting point for the avant-garde, animation and performance art.”

COSMIC MINIATURES. Dir. Alexander Kluge. World Premiere. “At 91 years of age, Alexander Kluge is solidly regarded as a trailblazing figure in New German Cinema and the avant-garde. He remains active and curious about media, so it’s no wonder that he recently began experimenting with artificial intelligence. He has been exploring a particular programme developed in Munich for medical research, which he systematically strains in order to find his images at the farthest ends of the system's creative faculties...”

DREAM TEAM. Dir. Lev Kalman, Whitney Horn. World Premiere. “It’s 1997 and two Interpol agents, No and Chase (Esther Garrel and Alex Zhang Hungtai), are assigned to investigate the mysterious death of a coral smuggler in Mexico. As their investigation takes them into weirder and more tropical realms, they become caught up in a probable international conspiracy involving an inappropriately sexy coral scientist, two wellness-loving interns, lectures on neuropsychology and platonic absolutes...”

ECO VILLAGE. Dir. Phoebe Nir. World Premiere. “A young songwriter flees the city to join a farming commune, falling in love and falling in with a cult-like eco-group, with disastrous consequences...”

Still from ECO VILLAGE. Courtesy of IFFR.

ETERNAL. Dir. Ulaa Salim. World Premiere. “An earthquake causes a huge fissure at the bottom of the ocean, potentially destabilising the Earth’s already precarious environment, but also forcing a young scientist to decide whether to pursue his career or continue a relationship. Over time, he ruminates on the decision he made.”

LA CHIMERA. Dir. Alice Rohrwacher. Dutch Premiere. “Arthur, masterfully interpreted by Josh O’Connor, is a young Englishman in love with the ancient civilisations. He and his friends earn their living looting Etrurian tombs, selling the artefacts on the black market to rich collectors. In LA CHIMERA, Arthur, haunted by a lost love, will go on a private and impossible quest to save himself and a forever lost past...”

MARS EXPRESS. Dir. Jérémie Périn. Dutch Premiere. “In 2200, private detective Aline and her cyborg partner track down a hacker – an investigation that spans Earth and Mars, firefights and heists, dodgy deals and anti-robot conspiracies. Drawing from sci-fi classics, this sleek hard-boiled anime is still full of surprises, twists and unforgettable quirks.”

SR. Dir. Lea Hartlaub. World Premiere. “Employing a dazzling panorama of stories and facts as it spans the globe, this mosaic-like portrait of the giraffe is just as much a history of humankind, in myth and reality, as a journey from the museum to the vast African plains.”

THE BEAST. Dir. Bertrand Bonello. Dutch Premiere. “This science fiction melodrama jumps between past lives, each haunted by love. In 1910, 2014 and 2044, three versions of Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) live very different lives, with the same recurring ghosts... 2044's Gabrielle relives these recollections to purge her 'affects' – a standard medical procedure in this bleak future of AI dominance and emotional sterility.”

THE NIGHT VISITORS. Dir. Michael Gitlin. Dutch Premiere. “In large and small fragments, through a critical lens that is by turns social and personal, THE NIGHT VISITORS closely examines moths as aesthetic beings and as carriers of meaning.”

Still from THE NIGHT VISITORS. Courtesy of IFFR.

VOYAGE. Dir. Scud. Dutch Premiere. “VOYAGE is a cinematic excursion into the depths of the human mind, offering up different perspectives on depression, as a young psychiatrist embarks on a sailing trip and his reflections on former patients take the form of short stories.”]

• Science Films at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival
• Science Films at IFFR 2023
• Director Interview: Jane Schoenbrun on We're All Going To The World's Fair

Science & Film: I'm excited to talk to you, what a fun film.

Peter Sillen: I'm glad you thought so. There's a lot of tech in the film, but we wanted it to be a fun ride. We didn't want it to be this talking head--I mean, there are a lot of talking heads--but we wanted it to be to have some energy and to have something that was dynamic and kind of propelled you through.

S&F: Totally. I mean, talking head takes on a new meaning after watching the film... [laughs]

PS: We tried to lean into the love story and the humanistic elements of AI, and what's motivating some of what they're doing in the world.

S&F: I've heard about Bina and saw the film SOPHIA about the robotics company that constructed BINA48.

PS: When we were there shooting, that was the first day they were shooting. One of the DPs was there, flying solo. Two film crews show up the same day, everybody's looking at each other, like, what? But it was it was cool. It all worked fine.

S&F: So I knew about Bina, but I really did not know about Martine, about their relationship and about her seemingly superhuman capabilities.

PS: There's definitely an element of Marbina–them [Martine and Bina] together–of, if they're not on your radar, and then you learn about them, it's like, how did I not know about these people? They're doing such amazing, extraordinary things. Sometimes it's hard to believe that they're under the radar.

Bina Rothblatt and Martine Rothblatt in LOVE MACHINA. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

S&F: Having spent time with them, do you get the impression that they are under the radar, or are trying to be?

PS: No, I don't mean to say they're under the radar by any design or anything. I think they're just normal people living their lives and doing kind of extraordinary things. In 2014, Martine published the book Virtually Human. A lot of the press that you see out there is basically from that time period, and it continues, but there's a normal ebb and flow to it.

S&F: What was your interest in the story to begin with?

PS: My producing partner, Brendan Doyle, and I, we got an email from a friend who had talked about an AI that was going to college. It was going to be the first AI to take a college class. We quickly did a little research and we saw that Martine and Bina were behind it. Not knowing much about any of it, we just thought, this could be really interesting. So, we jumped in. It started following BINA48 in this college class of Philosophy of Love, and then, immediately, the philosophy of love starts to open up the conversation to BINA48 and how she was created, and it just started expanding.

There were a couple of years where we had to earn Bina and Martine's trust. At some point, we crossed a threshold where they were okay with us. We showed them a first cut and I think they felt like we were really serious about what we were doing and were trying to document this in a legit way. Slowly, we started having more and more access, and then the film started to evolve.

S&F: Did you feel intimidated making a film about AI?

PS: In the beginning it was intimidating. I was reading books and listening to books, articles, it was nonstop. Every waking hour I was trying to figure out what is AI, what are these large language models, neural networks. And a lot of Martine and Bina's inspiration comes from the science fiction world and Octavia Butler. I had this bizarre duality of trying to read these science books about Marvin Minsky and AI, and the other side of it, which is the sci-fi side of it. At some point, you just become saturated with all this stuff, and then you're kind of looking at what's in front of you. That was, in some ways, liberating; just sticking with what we were shooting.

The trajectory of the public perception of AI from 2017 to now has been pretty incredible to see. I think we've been really fortunate to be able to be in that wave of having it in the foreground of the public's thought. For a long time with BINA48, we were dealing with technology that was kind of older. BINA48 in a lot of ways is a conversation starter. Martine and Bina were not ever pretending to be Deep Mind or Neuralink or anything like that. It was really this idea of getting audiences to start talking about STEAM and STEM education and trying to push the boundaries and engage people. But then when Chat GPT came around, all of a sudden, when she [BINA48] got Chat GPT layered in, it just was, it was like... Martine used to talk about the mind files and this idea of "mindware." Somewhere in the future, they're going to start creating software, which would animate your mind file [she said]. It was a little hard to grasp when she was talking about it. It was sort of like pie in the sky, in the future, 20 years away. And then all of a sudden, boom, it's here, you're using it. And then we're putting it in BINA48. It's another level of what we're talking about. We were really, really fortunate that we were able to capture that. It's one thing to talk about, it's another thing to see it.

S&F: As you were exploring the more technical side of things, were there any people or readings that were useful?

PS: A number of books were really good. That Cade Metz book that came out a couple years ago was great. Martine's book was, for me, really interesting. It's very technical. It's written in almost legalese—she is a lawyer. What I really got from it, and that I think is the important message in the film maybe, is that all this technology and AI in general are really just mirrors on our society of what we want to create. I think Stephanie Dinkins says it very well: how are we supposed to get that right if we haven't even gotten basic civil rights right? It's moving quickly, and it's something that we have to engage in. Hopefully, that's some of the dialogue that will start when you come out of the film.

S&F: Do you see BINA48 as a prototype for something that one day everyone will do? Do they see it that way?

PS: I think they're still working on the idea of mind files. You could go to LifeNaut today and start an account. It's really just a repository of everything that you want it to be, organizing your life and your thoughts. I don't want to speak for them, but I think the idea is that at some point, you will have options. You might literally want to have a biological body remade from your DNA—LifeNaut actually stores your DNA for $99. Or, it might be a hologram, or it might be some sort of avatar. I think robotics is probably going through the same revolution that a lot of the tech companies are, so maybe in a few years, that will be more of a realistic possibility. I don't know how realistic it is right now.

S&F: Have you started your LifeNaut file?

PS: I started one just to see what is going on that side of LifeNaut. I haven't really dived into it because I wanted to keep a distance. We're fans, but at the same time, we wanted to keep some objectivity.

♦

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Please note: This article contains spoilers.

A MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD is an FX/Hulu miniseries (seven episodes, each about 40 minutes). The lead, Darby Hart, is played by Emma Corrin. Among the supporting cast are Joan Chen (cast as Lu Mei), Harris Dickinson (as Bill Farrah), Clive Owen (as Andy Ronson, a character whose role increases as the series progresses), and Brit Marling (one of the show’s creators and producers, as Lee Andersen).

Darby is a hacker who got her start by uncovering the identity of a serial killer, and then writing a book about it. Her father was the coroner in a small Iowa county; at one point Darby says “this is my 57th crime scene.” In her investigations she worked with her boyfriend Bill Farrah. The opening of the series has Darby reading from her book. (The series closes with her reading from her second book about the experiences of the miniseries.) There are extended flashbacks throughout the series to Darby and Bill in their earlier work trying to trace the footsteps of the serial killer and uncover their identity, with the help of an online community of amateur sleuths.

I admit that I am not of the generation that produces modern hackers, but I have taught enough university students recently to feel I can comment on them. Women are rare in that world. There is a huge gender gap in computing, and there are several studies of how that affects the software that–increasingly–will dominate and direct our lives. The gender issues in the world of computing are well known to those of us who live there, but it seems hard to figure out why the issues exist and harder yet to know how to change things. (This is not culture-war material; with the huge shortage of computing talent to be hired, the inability to draw equally from both men and women means that the shortage will likely continue, and computing will thus continue to be done badly due to the talent shortage.)

The basic plot of A MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD is that a zillionaire tech mogul (Andy Ronson) brings eight people to a secluded “retreat” in Iceland (the end of the world of the show title) for undisclosed purposes. What follows is in part a standard plot (seclusion, storm, isolation, megalomania, shades of Agatha Christie). Three are found dead, but under circumstances that can’t quite be called murder. The first of the dead is Darby’s old boyfriend Bill, who has become a famous artist critiquing technology. The rest of the series is about determining who did what and why.

Bill dies first.

I think the series starts really well, with tension and foreshadowing. It lags a little in the middle episodes (perhaps the seven episodes could have been cut to five?), but Darby is compelling throughout. The others are less so (at least not to this reviewer) until the very end when Ronson and Andersen take on larger roles.

Emma Corrin as Darby Hart. Image courtesy of FX.

Although the series involves some depictions of hacking, it is more focused on surveillance technology, with an undercurrent that software is almost certainly fragile. Software cannot be assumed to be secure against malicious hackers, and we should be very wary of software that makes “policy” decisions about human beings without concurrence by humans with discernment. The setting of the show, a retreat in Iceland, is under complete surveillance—think Hal 9000 from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, but now with a holographic presence named “Ray.” Ray has total awareness of what’s going on, and fifty years of advances in computing. (Think back to 2001: “Dave, I can’t do that.”) At one point, Darby hacks the cameras at the resort. She and Lee (a renowned former hacker, somewhat on the run from the authorities, and someone Darby looks up to) combine forces. The real geek-speak is somewhat minimal, but the discussions about passwords, network IDs, and Ray’s surveillance permeate Darby’s attempts to understand what has really happened at the resort. When Darby is confronted with another of the guests, she asks “Are you ‘vi’ or ‘emacs’?” When the answer is a blank stare, Darby knows her visitor isn’t a hacker (and is thus not threatening on a computing front). (Non-geeks will probably miss this: These are the two major editors used by programmers; I use ‘vi’.)

Ray is a program that monitors everything inside the retreat and can be represented via holography as if “he” were a person. Towards the end of the show it is suggested that one reason for the retreat is to market Ray to Lu Mei, who works on the creation/development of smart cities. There are some comments about technology that are dead-on. Lu Mei says that “The future of everything is in collaboration with artificial intelligence.” Ronson then puts in his two cents: “I prefer the term ‘alternative intelligence.’” Lu Mei might be wrong, but her comment is enormously contentious today and will continue to be so. A large part of what we will do in the (even near) future will be assisted by, or skewed by, the AI/alternative intelligence of Chat, of Siri, of even things as simple as Google searches. It is already the case that we turn to the internet for answers to questions of fact. It’s maybe only three or four years from now until we might ask for more than just factoid responses. At what point will AI responses be more than just for family room discussions and responses upon which policy actions rely? What is really needed is a greater awareness that what is coming back from the computer needs to be vetted, if what is coming back is going to affect what happens in the lives of people. AI is great when it works, but it isn’t perfect yet, and we need to vet what we get from AI in several areas.

Joan Chen as Lu Mei. Image courtesy of FX.

With tools like facial recognition, AI-generated text and art, and extensive surveillance, the capabilities and the constraints on the power of AI creations like “Ray” are going to be debated for several years. Ray, as presented in the series, is perhaps ten years away. The danger is that a flawed and incomplete prototype version of Ray could be permitted five years from now to affect what we do, or could do. Those shiny new objects could very likely have some sharp edges.

There is also a major undercurrent in the series about power. Ronson has an empire, and funds, and is intent on building more. Darby (and towards the end Lee) demonstrates that there are flaws in the software that those with less power could find and use to their advantage. There are likely always flaws in large software programs, and Darby and Lee demonstrate that even Ray has flaws that can be found, and then exploited, by those not necessarily less capable but certainly not part of the original team producing the software. It has long been my belief that the reason we have so much bad software is that there is no commercial advantage to getting software rock solid “right.” The advantage is to have a “something” six months ahead of the competition, and a plausible statement about updates when flaws are found. I have often said the test of an iPad app is a four-year-old. They will know that things can happen, and will push buttons expecting something to happen. If the app freezes from too many random buttons, it needs to be fixed. The apps need to be robust even when tried by a four-year-old. They need to recover from this type of behavior, and they usually cannot. The same can be said for Ray. “He” can “do,” provided what he is asked to “do” is within what “his” programming dictates. Go outside those bounds, and all bets are off.

The show’s conclusion is worth the wait; it is totally relevant to what we are experiencing and debating in policy and seeing in the news. Can we believe that the software will do only and exactly what we think we have written it to do? Have we overlooked things that could happen that go beyond what we thought we had coded into the program? Are we unaware of what could happen because we did not properly limit what the software could do? These are the basic questions about AI in the real world.

Edoardo Ballerini as Ray. Image courtesy of FX.

The British writer Charles Stross wrote science fiction about technology “just a little bit out there.” Stross has apparently quit writing his science fiction because he feels it is no longer “fiction.” This series has the same feel. Stross wrote books about a woman detective in Edinburgh, Scotland, who would sit in the coffee shop with her CopSpace glasses giving her virtual/augmented reality, and her haptic ability to see or change things with a literal wave of her hands. That technology isn’t here now (except in the labs), but it’s only a very small number of years away.

This series ends in the same vein as one of Stross’s stories. I will foreshadow the end in saying that we get an understanding of where we need to create boundaries for what software “can” do for us and what it “should” do for us. It’s not clear how we create those boundaries, and it’s not clear how we demonstrate that we have covered all the moral and ethical bases in the writing of the software. The “alternative intelligence” of Ray, the program that monitors everything, is clearly just around the corner—for good or for ill.

I recommend the series. Hang in there for the middle episodes, and be aware that the ending is may seem conclusive but does not fully resolve the issues that arise. As I was told long ago by my department chair, “A system is only as good as its backup.” The absence of backups makes for simpler television, but is probably not what we have in the real world. The Ray as “he” exists in the retreat is eventually brought under control, but it would be foolish to think, especially in these days of cloud computing, that something as capable as Ray would only exist inside the retreat.

♦

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The jury, comprised of Dr. Dwaipayan Banerjee (MIT), Dan Berger (President, Oscilloscope Laboratories), writer/director Sophie Barthes (THE POD GENERATION), actor/writer/director Anna Konkle (PEN15), Dr. Reyhaneh Maktoufi (Howard Hughes Medical Institute) and Dr. Katina Michael (Arizona State University), selected the following filmmakers:

The winner of the 2023 Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize:

LA FORZA by Justine Beed (USC)

Logline: “A semi-historical, romantic dramedy about the electric life of physicist Laura Bassi—the first female professor—and the husband who was her assistant.”

Jury citation: “LA FORZA is an exceptional treatment for a series—full of wit and romance—that tells the story of an underappreciated woman in science. The jury was impressed by the way in which the writer depicts eighteenth-century science and brings the characters to life. The jury is delighted to award the Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize to LA FORZA.”

The jury also awarded honorable mention to Emma Zetterberg for her feature script THE LIGHT IN YOUR EYES:

THE LIGHT IN YOUR EYES by Emma Zetterberg (NYU)

Logline: “Allvar Gullstrand, a Swedish scientist who won the Nobel Prize in 1911 for his contributions to understanding eyesight, is blinded by his own grief over losing his legacy and decides to prevent Albert Einstein from winning a Nobel Prize.”

Jury citation: “A gracefully written historical drama that explores scientific rivalry and a complex family relationship. The jury was moved by the honest dialogue, articulate storytelling, and the potential to visualize scientific concepts. The jury is pleased to award honorable mention to THE LIGHT IN YOUR EYES.”

The winner of the 2023 Sloan Student Discovery Prize:

THE GARDEN by Lara Palmqvist (University of Texas, Austin)

Logline: “Drawing on timely concerns of climate change, biodiversity loss, and agricultural innovation, THE GARDEN follows a passionate plant breeder as he tries to secure his family’s future by developing genetically enhanced seeds while working for a controlling socialite who wants to transplant an elaborate garden onto her Kentucky estate. An ecological drama interested in interconnection, drawing links between social and environmental justice; opulence and exploitation; and food and the people who bring it to our plates.”

Jury citation: “The jury found THE GARDEN to be an impressive portrayal of a world grappling with the many devastating effects of climate change. The script is carefully attentive to the complexity of issues related to food production, plant genetics, and agricultural science. It is an original, poetic, and mythological, yet grounded, story. The jury is thrilled to award the Sloan Student Discovery Prize to THE GARDEN.”

Palmqvist is the first filmmaker of University of Texas at Austin to claim the prize since its inception in 2019.

Museum of the Moving Image will celebrate the winners on January 11, 2024 in New York.

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The annual Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Feature Film Prize will be awarded to the post-apocalyptic romance LOVE ME. Written and directed by Sam and Andy Zuchero, the filmmaking pair’s feature-length debut stars Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun.

Sloan Science & Film will be covering Sundance, so check back for updates once the festival begins.

U.S. Dramatic Competition

LOVE ME. Dir. Sam Zuchero, Andy Zuchero. “Long after humanity’s extinction, a buoy and a satellite meet online and fall in love.”

SUNCOAST. Dir. Laura Chinn. “A teenager who, while caring for her brother along with her audacious mother, strikes up an unlikely friendship with an eccentric activist who is protesting one of the most landmark medical cases of all time. Inspired by a semi-autobiographical story.”

U.S. Documentary Competition

EVERY LITTLE THING. Dir. Sally Aitken. “Amid the glamour of Hollywood, Los Angeles, a woman finds herself on a transformative journey as she nurtures wounded hummingbirds, unraveling a visually captivating and magical tale of love, fragility, healing, and the delicate beauty in tiny acts of greatness.”

LOVE MACHINA. Dir. Peter Sillen. “Futurists Martine and Bina Rothblatt commission an advanced humanoid AI named Bina48 to transfer Bina’s consciousness from a human to a robot in an attempt to continue their once-in-a-galaxy love affair for the rest of time.”

World Cinema Documentary Competition

ETERNAL YOU. Dir. Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck. “Startups are using AI to create avatars that allow relatives to talk with their loved ones after they have died. An exploration of a profound human desire and the consequences of turning the dream of immortality into a product.”

IBELIN. Dir. Benjamin Ree. “Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer, died of a degenerative muscular disease at the age of 25. His parents mourned what they thought had been a lonely and isolated life, when they started receiving messages from online friends around the world. Benjamin Ree (THE PAINTER AND THE THIEF, 2020) returns to the festival with a heartwarming and adventurous journey through the breadth of Mats Steen’s digital life and his profound impact on a community.”

NOCTURNES. Dir. Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan. “. . . Deep in the pitch-black forest, a few hundred moths are drawn by a single source of illumination to a piece of hung canvas. Only through this intimate examination can their existence, and the happenings of their world, be made visible. Though moth life spans are measured in hours and represent only a small amount of the immense biodiversity of their species, in these small beings lies a history of our planet. . .”

Still from NOCTURNES. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival.

THE BATTLE FOR LAIKIPIA. Dir. Daphne Matziaraki, Pete Murim. “Unresolved historical injustices and climate change raise the stakes in a generations-old conflict between Indigenous pastoralists and white landowners in Laikipia, Kenya, a wildlife conservation haven.”

NEXT

SEEKIING MAVIS BEACON. Dir. Jazmin Renée Jones. “Launched in the late ’80s, educational software Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing taught millions globally, but the program’s Haitian-born cover model vanished decades ago. Two DIY investigators search for the unsung cultural icon, while questioning notions of digital security, AI, and Black representation in the digital realm.”

Still from SEEKING MAVIS BEACON. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival.

Premieres

GIRLS STATE. Dir. Amanda McBaine, Jesse Moss. “Teenage girls from wildly different backgrounds across Missouri navigate a week-long immersive experiment in American democracy, build a government from the ground up, and reimagine what it means to govern.”

THE OUTRUN. Dir. Nora Fingscheidt. World Premiere. “After living life on the edge in London, Rona (Saoirse Ronan) attempts to come to terms with her troubled past. She returns to the wild beauty of Scotland’s Orkney Islands — where she grew up. . . Grounded in local lore and rich with Liptrot’s journalistic digressions on the land and its life-forms, THE OUTRUN artfully ties Rona’s healing to her growing environmental stewardship. . .”

THELMA. Dir. Josh Margolin. “When 93-year-old Thelma Post gets duped by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson, she sets out on a treacherous quest across the city to reclaim what was taken from her.”

New Frontier

BEING (THE DIGITAL GRIOT). Dir. Dr. Rashaad Newsome. “In this innovative participatory experience, Being, an artificial intelligence digital griot, asks the audience to engage in unifying and challenging discussions. It features a soundscape and movement informed by a dataset from Black communities, theorists, poets, and activists, including bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Dazié Grego-Sykes, and Cornel West.”

Still from BEING (THE DIGITAL GRIOT). Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival.

ENO. Dir. Gary Hustwit. “Visionary musician and artist Brian Eno — known for producing David Bowie, U2, Talking Heads, among many others. . . reveals his creative processes in this groundbreaking generative documentary: a film that’s different every time it’s shown. Filmmaker Gary Hustwit brings to the Sundance Film Festival the first career-spanning documentary about visionary musician. . . This innovative bio-doc also elevates the documentary form to become an evergreen, algorithmic performance.”

Family Matinee

OUT OF MY MIND. Dir. Amber Sealey. “Melody Brooks is navigating sixth grade as a nonverbal wheelchair user who has cerebral palsy. With the help of some assistive technology and her devoted, exuberant allies, Melody shows that what she has to say is more important than how she says it.”

Short Film Program

MATTA AND MATTO. Dir. Bianca Caderas, Kerstin Zemp. “In a time when all interpersonal closeness is forbidden, the hourly hotel Vaip offers wondrous rooms where guests snuggle up to devices built with great skill and let themselves fall into the perfect illusion of human touch.”

MIISUFY. Dir. Liisi Grünberg. “Digital pet cat Miisu gets tired of her owner and starts to revolt. Inspired by Tamagotchi — observing the world through the eyes of digital pets.”

Still from MIISUFY. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival.

TERRA MATER. Dir. Kantarama Gahig. “Technology and waste in our lands, our systems, our bones. Wandering our spaces, she cannot help but wonder, where is the space for healing?”

Special Screenings

WAR GAME. Dir. Jesse Moss, Tony Gerber. “A bipartisan group of U.S. defense, intelligence, and elected policymakers spanning five presidential administrations participate in an unscripted role-play exercise in which they confront a political coup backed by rogue members of the U.S. military, in the wake of a contested presidential election.”

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The article has been re-published below in its entirety.

An estimated one third of Americans drink water tainted with human-made toxic chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Hundreds of communities around the country are adjacent to PFAS hotspots originating from military bases, industrial facilities, or fire-training areas. More such places are identified almost every time someone spends the money to look. Ninety-nine percent of Americans’ blood contains PFAS, making PFAS contamination one of the most unifying characteristics of the American populace today. Our attention to the dizzying PFAS crisis in the U.S. is largely predicated on the work of an unfamiliar hero, Mr. Robert Bilott. Todd Haynes’s new feature film DARK WATERS introduces the public to Bilott by chronicling his ground-breaking legal battle against the DuPont chemical company’s mishandling of PFAS contamination.

DARK WATERS is based upon several accounts of Bilott’s work, reported by The New York Times Magazine, Sharon Lerner in The Intercept, and Bilott’s own account in his book Exposure. Bilott, played by Mark Ruffalo, is an attorney working for a large and prestigious corporate defense firm in Cincinnati when he is approached by a rough-shod and clearly frustrated acquaintance of his grandmother’s, a Mr. Earl Tennant (Bill Camp). Tennant provides tapes and physical documentation of the ghastly demise of his cattle farm in Parkersburg, West Virginia; Bilott spent time in Parkersburg and on Tennant’s farm as a child while visiting his grandmother there. Tennant is convinced that a landfill operated by the DuPont company upstream from his farm is the cause of the continuing maladies suffered by his cattle and his family. Bilott tries to communicate to Tennant that he “isn’t that kind of environmental lawyer,” yet Tennant’s exasperated resilience strikes a chord with the compassionate and upstanding ethos of Bilott. He persuades his boss (Tim Robbins) to allow him to pursue the case on a contingency basis.

Bill Camp as Earl Tennant

I watched DARK WATERS with my teenage nephew; the scenes following Bilott’s dive into the case are most aptly described by his words, as “the most gripping depiction of thousands of hours of tedious legal paperwork ever put on the silver screen.” Bilott’s work results in the release of hundreds of thousands of pages related to the landfill upstream of the Tennant’s farm; DuPont is trying to bury Bilott in paperwork. Their tactic underestimates Bilott’s fastidiousness, and he combs through every piece of the provided documentation to put together a story of unbelievable corporate malfeasance: DuPont knew they were exposing their workers and the surrounding community to high levels of a hazardous and unregulated chemicals and did not disclose this to anyone, including the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Dupont also dumped tons of sludge containing a toxic but unregulated chemical in a landfill upstream of Tennant’s farm leading to the poisoning of his cattle, just as he suspected.

This dark dive into DuPont’s documents introduces DARK WATERS’s audience to a pivotal villain of the film that didn’t make the credit list–PFOA. PFOA, also known as C8, are acronyms for perfluorooctanoic acid, a type of chemical used for decades by DuPont to produce Teflon. PFOA is part of the larger PFAS family, encompassing any human-created chemical that contains a certain number of carbon-fluorine chemical bonds. Because of the strength of the carbon-fluorine bond, this family of chemicals demonstrates remarkable environmental persistence, sticking around in the environment and living creatures for decades, if not centuries. PFOA also has widespread commercial and industrial utility. It is used in fire-fighting foams, nonstick cookware like Teflon, stain-resistant carpeting, water-resistant clothing, food packaging, compostable plates, some cosmetics, and many other consumer products that repel oil, grease, or water.

A dialogue between Bilott and his wife Sarah (Anne Hathaway) reveals why PFOA and other PFAS are problematic, despite their utility. PFOA and other PFAS are associated with adverse health effects at low exposure levels. High levels of PFOA in air, water, and soil around Parkersburg, pose real problems for public and ecological health.

The revelations surrounding PFOA and the scope of the DuPont’s cover-up result in a settlement for the Tennants, and a follow-up medical monitoring claim on behalf of thousands of citizens who drank water contaminated by PFOA leaked by the Parkersburg DuPont plant.

Anne Hathaway as Sarah Barlage

The deliberate and painstaking rhythm of DARK WATERS as it follows these legal battles, which lasted from 1999 to 2015, does not wrap up with a cathartic resolution for audiences. Bilott wins both his cases versus DuPont despite continued corporate chicanery, but in the end the company admits no wrongdoing, no criminal case was pursued, no regulation of PFAS was enacted, and PFOA remains at elevated levels in the blood and bodies of the Parkersburg plaintiffs.

Today, we know the scope of contamination extends well beyond Parkersburg, West Virginia. PFOA and other PFAS remain in the blood of U.S. citizens and people around the globe, with no clear regulatory or remediation path in sight. PFAS remain unregulated at a federal level in the U.S. Chemical companies continue to churn out analogues of PFOA and other PFAS for use in consumer and industrial applications.

Bilott remains at the forefront of efforts to responsibly address PFAS use and misuse, beyond the narrative captured in DARK WATERS. In 2018, he filed a class action lawsuit against eleven PFAS-producing companies on behalf of all Americans with PFAS in their blood—99% of the American public. His latest litigation tackles a larger swath of PFAS; it compels multiple PFAS-polluting companies to fund studies examining health effects associated with types of PFAS beyond PFOA. Such data will provide evidence of harm related to PFAS exposure. Without such information, concerned citizens must take on the burden of proof that individual harm was caused by a specific PFAS compound—an onerous and slow-moving undertaking, as exemplified by Wilbur Tennant in DARK WATERS. In real life as in the film, Wilbur Tennant and his wife both contracted cancer and passed away before the resolution of Bilott’s legal efforts in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

As an early-career scientist researching PFAS, I appreciated the accuracy of the technical detail provided in DARK WATERS and the searing, simple ways in which the film conveys the horrific scope of the Parkersburg PFOA story and its broader implications. DARK WATERS captures the tones of despair and inequity that define the PFAS crisis—some people are allowed to pollute the bodies of others for a profit, and we tolerate a culture that allows this to be repeated over and over again. With this in mind, Bilott’s heroic efforts must be contextualized in light of a sobering truth—one man cannot vanquish the behemoth of PFAS contamination and the culture that enables it. The solution? As Bilott exclaims in the film: “We protect us.” Community engagement and activism across multiple scales and localities must continue to advocate for pollutant accountability and clean-up.

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Science & Film: Both FREUD'S LAST SESSION and your last film, THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY, are films about rather mythical figures. I'm curious about what you see as the connection between these projects and your impulse to tackle the lives, or moments in the lives, of such people?

Matthew Brown: After doing INFINITY, I was pretty ready to run for the hills. When I was brought this script, I was like, no, no, no, no. My father's a psychiatrist, so I was like, this is a recipe for disaster because thematically, it was just so close to [home]. It's also exactly what you're saying, you've got these figures, but it's the themes underneath that get their hooks into you. I had put the script down so many times, and it just always drew me back because of the underlying themes. Science and religion. It's really the question of the of our time right now. This was six years ago when the script first came to me. It just felt very, very timely. strangely enough. I mean, who would have thought the story about C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud coming together would be timely? But it's knocking on the door. It's saying here, let me in. That's why I felt compelled to try to make the film.

S&F: You also bring in the story of Anna and Dorothy, which people might know, but is certainly not as well known...

MB: I didn't think they were [that well known]. We had the same thing with THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY, where the people of the time whitewash [people out] and history doesn't know the difference. With this film, Anna Freud and Dorothy, it's something that nobody wanted to ever, ever address or talk about. Even today, it's not something that's not really well known. I think the same could be said for C.S. Lewis in a lot of ways, because he had this relationship that went on for, like, 35 years with Janie Moore that nobody really wants to talk about, or address. But if you want to know anything about these people, then you probably should know the truth, because it's who they are.

Matthew Goode as C.S. Lewis. Photographer: Sabrina Lantos. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

S&F: I noticed in the film that you included a lot of the art on Freud's desk, why was that important to you to show?

MB: That's something that isn't well known, and it's fascinating, actually, and we got to work closely with the [Freud] Museum. Luciana Arrighi, who was also the production designer on my last film, she worked closely with the museum and they were doing 3D imaging of all the figures [from Freud's desk]. We really tried to replicate that office because it's almost like an aspect of Freud's personality, which is showing on screen all the time.

I learned a lot from my father, too, who's a pretty well-read psychiatrist, and he has read a lot about Freud over the years. He was telling me, the thing about Freud was just the intellectual curiosity. He was somebody who wasn't afraid to make mistakes or be wrong. If he felt like something that he had come up with was obsolete, he just moved on. And so it's funny, because I think people look back a lot on Freud and say, he was so rigid. But I think if he was alive today, he probably would have been like, my theories are crazy, and I'm gonna go on to new theories. I sort of love that aspect of him. I think it's seen in a way in that production design or in his own production design of his surroundings; you can see his curiosity at the world and humankind and behavior.

S&F: Were there other aspects of Freud's personality—his insights, his work—that you wanted to convey in terms of your direction?

MB: I didn't want to depict two screaming men in a room. And I don't think Freud was like that. Talking to people who have studied Freud over the years, one of the things that really came up a lot was that this man had a really good sense of humor. Not just in telling these jokes, which were just so not funny, which is kind of funny, but I think that he really enjoyed life. I wanted that to come across with Freud. That was something that Hopkins really embraced as well. When an audience, so far, is watching the film and they're engaging in it, I know it because they're laughing. There is humor here. It's not comedy, but...

S&F: Anthony Hopkins does an incredible job, why did you choose him for the role?

MB: For me, he was the... he's the dream. I think he is probably the greatest living actor in many ways. It was preposterous to even think we could get him. So you try, you know, because that's your obligation to yourself. We tried and we failed, and then I did some more work on the screenplay. Then we went back to him for a second trial. Very, very, very fortunately, he wanted to engage. I didn't know what that would mean, I was so blown away. I figured it would be one of those situations where you just stand back and get out of the way completely, which I would have been fine with. But he doesn't work that way. And it was the most incredible year of engagement with Hopkins, with discussions and delving deep into the psyche of the character that he was creating, because he's creating his own Freud. We're not making a biopic here, so there was freedom because of the fictional nature of the whole story.

S&F: What are you working on next?

MB: I'm working on writing something right now that is in the vein of these other two films. I think I’m going to keep getting drawn into these big themes. But then, I'm looking to do something that's going to be quite a bit different. I have a couple projects swirling and we’ll see what emerges first, but I'm hoping to do all of them. It's exciting to try something different. Maybe even a comedy or romantic comedy.

S&F: Lastly, I’m curious, has your dad seen this film?

MB: He and his partner saw the film and they really enjoyed it. That was great. That happened on INFINITY with the mathematicians, they really embraced the film and that meant so much to me. This film has been shown to psychoanalytical groups and so far, the response has been very positive, so I hope it continues. Out of THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY I created a foundation, The Infinity Arts Foundation that is a tiny, tiny version of what Sloan does trying to help these kinds of films and I just, I'm in awe of Sloan and the amazing work to help these kinds of films get made.

♦

• Ramanujan: THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY
• Director Interview: Matt Johnson on BLACKBERRY
• OPPENHEIMER: The Man Who Brought Fire to Humanity

We have identified six Sloan-supported films inspired by the true stories of female scientists whose work belongs in the history books, all of which are available to watch right now.

FEATURE FILMS

BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY. Dir. Alexandra Dean. 2017. Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr (ZIEGFELD GIRL, SAMSON AND DELILAH) was known as the world’s most beautiful woman–Snow White and Cat Woman were both based on her iconic look. However, her arresting appearance and glamorous life stood in the way of her being given the credit she deserved as an ingenious inventor whose pioneering work helped revolutionize modern communication technology. An Austrian Jewish emigrant who invented a covert communication system to try to help defeat the Nazis during World War II, Lamarr was ignored by the scientific community at the time. It was only toward the very end of her life that it was discovered that her invention is the basis for secure Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth technologies. Currently streaming on Netflix.

DECODING ANNIE PARKER. Dir. Steven Bernstein. 2013. The story of Anne Parker, a sharp witted, funny and irrepressible young woman who watches her mother, then sister, fall victim to breast cancer. When, later, she herself is diagnosed with the disease, she is resolved to fight back against immeasurable odds. The film is also the story of Mary-Claire King, the geneticist whose discovery of the BRCA1 gene and its link to breast cancer forever changed the understanding of human disease. Hers is considered one of the most important scientific discoveries of the 20th century. These two women are separated by thousands of miles, by circumstance, background and education, and yet their two lives gradually intertwine until a final, singular and life changing reckoning. Currently streaming on Prime Video.

HIDDEN FIGURES. Dir. Theodore Melfi. 2016. HIDDEN FIGURES uncovers the true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA who helped win the space race against America's rivals in the Soviet Union and, at the same time, sent the quest for equal rights and opportunity rocketing forwards. The film centers on Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson who worked at NASA as "human computers" in the 1950s. HIDDEN FIGURES is based on the Sloan-supported book by Margot Lee Shetterly, Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race. Currently streaming on Disney+.