Science New Wave Festival XIV

Bình

Ostin Fam

<p>An alien arrives on Earth on a quest to find assistance to rebuild his home. Under dissociated instruction of his spaceship, he makes a stopover at a construction site in Vietnam, where the biggest temple of the world is being built. In disguise, the alien encounters a reverent worshipper, a cynical construction worker and a mysterious medium. As the group performs a spirit summoning ceremony, the alien observes these individuals exchanging theirs different ideas of home.</p>

To Live and Die in the Shadows: Meditations on Ferns, Survival and Horizontal Gene Transfer

Shannon Silva

<p>180 million years ago, through a chance horizontal gene transfer, ferns acquired a much needed light sensor (neochrome) that allowed them to modify and survive in low light environments.&nbsp;</p> <p>We should all be so lucky.</p>

Light Leak (2021)

Nate Dorr

<p>Light is information, a signal sounder than recollection. If there&rsquo;s anyone out there to receive the message.<br /> <br /> Alone in a sealed apartment&nbsp;until time loses meaning, the world outside unreal or unreachable, archaic illuminations crawling across the walls, connections fraying. What is happening here? A science fictional essay film, or its inverse. A break-up film about optics, memory, data. Endings and what survives them or fails to.</p> <p>Many thanks due to Maya Edelman, Dave Zackin, Zach Nader, and the Regional Plan Association.</p>

Galapagos: Secrets of the Ocean Giants

Jeffrey Garriock

<p>In the Galapagos Islands, a group of scientists works to understand the movements of the world&#39;s largest fish - the whale shark. Without understanding their breeding and migrations, we cannot hope to protect them. The scientists of the Galapagos Whale Shark Project head north to Darwin Island to uncover the secrets of these ocean giants.</p>

J'ai le Cafard

Maysaa Almumin

<p>A woman in a downhearted mood struggles to keep up appearances in front of her chirpy and driven office colleagues. An encounter with a dying cockroach in the office toilet develops into an absurd friendship, becoming the comforting companionship she needs until she realizes its destructive effects on her life.</p>

Tellurian Drama

Riar Rizaldi

<p>Mount Malabar in West Java, Indonesia, shows us a spectrum of human-nature relationships: the Dutch colonial government saw the mountain as a suitable spot for an antenna for radio transmission; for indigenous communities, the mountain itself is a partner for spiritual communication. In Riar Rizaldi&rsquo;s eclectic essay film, archival history collides with personal narratives on the history of technology, nature and colonization. A shaman&rsquo;s breath-taking zither performance brings us a moment of clarity.</p>

Horizon

Tanja Deman

<p>Horizon is an intimate story about the sea in the midst of an ecological crisis. In the collective imagination, the open sea and its isolated islands have always been a place of longing, contemplation, escape, even salvation. But, can these places still provide an escape in a time of global warming and pollution? This film essay, shot on the remotest and most isolated island in the Adriatic, observes the primordial seascape and the layered environmental changes that surround it.&nbsp;</p>

Terrain Ahead

Anna Kipervaser Majd Alloush

<p>A meditation on water, <em>Terrain Ahead</em> is a hybrid analog-digital experimental documentary exploring the trajectory of human impact on coastlines in the United Arab Emirates. The film asks questions around visibility and invisibility, around what is and can be documented and shared, and that which cannot.</p>

Full Picture

Jacob Reed

<p>Actress, comedian, and activist, Santina Muha, has been in a wheelchair since she was six years old. With meetings, hangouts, and classes happening virtually due to the Coronavirus quarantine, she&#39;s experiencing something new: choosing when (or if) to disclose her disability.</p>

Are we receiving biological signals from outer space?

Tim Grabham

<p>Could biological&nbsp;transmissions over vast astronomical distances be the preferred mode of communication between advanced cultures in space?</p> <p>A short experimental documentary regarding the biodynamic interstellar communication experiments of electronics engineer L. George Lawrence.</p>

VO

Nicolas Gourault

<p dir="ltr">A deadly accident between a self-driving car and a pedestrian sets off an investigation about the role of human workers in the training of driverless cars. Testimonies from vehicle operators guide us through a night shift where the landscape merges with data from the car&rsquo;s sensors.</p> <p><br /> &nbsp;</p>

Dora Sena

Jorge Caballero

<p dir="ltr">Facing the impossibility of finding more understandable bills for any citizen, and upon discovering that there were few proposals to deal with the health crisis caused by COVID, I decided to create a fictional character &quot;DORA SENA&quot;, Senator of the Colombia&rsquo;s Republic; made by an artificial intelligence system, which was trained with the 1479 bills, which I was able to download and systematize from the Senate&#39;s website between the periods 2013 to 2020. DORA SENA, automatically generates bills, using some basic inputs that allow it to generate specific projects related to the Pandemic. The digital project is complemented with images recorded before the pandemic, which denote somewhat dystopian and calm situations of our Bogota routines. DORA the senator wants to generate a space of reflection in the middle of the pandemic. Can a machine generate bills for dystopian situations?</p>

Antonese

Lavado Stubbs

<p>As a waitress at a local tourist resort on Cat Island, Antonese Anthon tells guests every day how to access a nearby beach that is one of the most beautiful in all The Bahamas. Yet, she has never been herself. This is not an uncommon scenario for many Bahamians&mdash;that a history of colonialism, servitude, and the transatlantic slave trade has created barriers to their most accessible resource, the ocean. However, through a process of remembering her inherent connection with the ocean, Antonese gains a vision of an alternative future&mdash;one that includes the opportunity to follow a brighter path forward, one that connects her to the global community through a shared love for the ocean. With the support of Young Marine Explorers, a Bahamian-led nonprofit working to ensure that all members of the community have the tools needed to protect the ocean, Antonese embarks on a transformational journey into her past and into the water. Donning mask, fins, and snorkel, she takes her first ever deep-sea dive and crosses a threshold toward hope.</p>

Missing Memories of the Universe

Ali Alvarez

<p>Filmmaker, Ali Alvarez, collaborates with one of America&rsquo;s leading astrophysicists, Dr. Rebecca Oppehnheimer, in a tribute to one of the world&rsquo;s leading scientific institutes, Palomar Observatory - creating a reflection on the memories of the universe lost due to the pandemic.</p>

A Mirror of the Cosmos

Isabelle Carbonell

<p>A Mirror of the Cosmos is a sci-fi feature documentary which explores how the Mar Menor lagoon, located in southeastern Spain and considered a beachside paradise, is being pushed by the climate crisis to the brink of extinction and beyond. Opening with a conversation between the moon and the sea about environmental violence, the film explores how the unlikely relationships between invasive blue crabs, nitrates, and mining deposits in Mar Menor deeply intertwine to tell the larger story of capitalism&rsquo;s extractive, cumulative effects on the environment over time, combined with record-setting temperatures and monsoon-like storms. The lagoon is a microcosm of the so-called Anthropocene, or &lsquo;the Age of Man&rsquo;. Ultimately, it asks what kinds of futures are possible, and can we adapt?</p>

The Problem of the Hydra

Maija Tammi

<p>What can clone itself, never grows old or dies, is neither plant nor animal, has no mouth or soul, and defies all human classification and understanding? It&#39;s the freshwater polyp known as Hydra! Using beguiling microscopic images and a twitchy electronic score, we get closer than ever to the only living thing that is eternal.&nbsp;</p>

Quebrantos (Breaches)

Maria Elorza Koldo Almandoz

<p>- You really loved him, didn&rsquo;t you?</p> <p>- Yes. I stopped loving him recently.</p> <p>(Interferences. Silences. Fissures. Two women talking. A radio-graphy).</p>

Don't Get Too Comfortable

Shaima Al Tamimi

<p>&lsquo;Don&rsquo;t Get Too Comfortable&rsquo; is a heartfelt introspective letter to the director&#39;s&nbsp;deceased grandfather. The letter questions the continuous pattern of movement amongst Yemenis in diaspora via her ancestral journey. The film fuses archival photographs, sourced footage, parallax animation, abstract videos to create an audio visual body of work that calls attention to the collective feeling of statelessness and sense of being felt by Yemeni (or non-Yemeni) migrants</p>

Mofiala

Boris Kpadenou

<p>Going against her husband&#39;s will, Ay&eacute;l&eacute; smuggles her daughter Mofiala to study in the city. Years later, an unknown epidemic strikes the village. Having become a doctor<strong>&nbsp;</strong>and researcher in bacteriology, Mofiala seems the ideal person to eradicate this problem.</p>

Podesta Island

Stéphanie Roland

<p>Podesta Island exists according to Google Earth.</p> <p>Podesta Island does not exist according to Wikipedia.</p> <p>Does it really exist? In a hyperconnected and mapped world, are there still unknown areas?</p> <p>The film Podesta Island paints the portrait of a controversial phantom island by confronting documentary sources with the narratives and legends inspired by this island. This exploration, where satellite imagery and live action intertwine, brings us closer to Terra Incognita and celebrates the beauty of imaginary geography.</p>

Tang Jër

Selly Raby Kane

<p>An unusual Tangana tenant observes in his mysterious restaurant, the incessant ballet of the beings that populate the city of Dakar. Between juicy omelets and steaming skewers, soups and condensed milk, Onfaaya soothes the restless,&nbsp;heals the wounds and welcomes everyday life as it presents itself, whatever the cost might be.</p>

Our Bed Is Green

Maggie Brennan

<p>Realm, a virtual reality facility, is quite transparent about the erotic nature of its services: Wall to wall, it is lined with tempting previews of sexy, ready-made experiences. But Realm also offers something more: With the help of data-mining technology, clientele can create virtual facsimiles of real-life places and people. This hyper-personalization is what attracts Cecily, a young woman grappling with a disorienting world and an intense fixation.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

Interspecies Architecture

Mauricio Freyre

<p>A journey in the forest near Taipei without a certain destination, a nomadic speculation on relationships and processes that occur among species and dimensions beyond the human.</p>

June Night

Mike Maryniuk

<p>Working in sublime self-isolation during the strange pandemic spring of 2020, avant-garde filmmaker Mike Maryniuk composes a surreal ode to rebirth and reinvention. Juxtaposing archival imagery with handcrafted animation, he conjures up a shimmering utopian dreamscape, a post-COVID world shaped by the primordial forces of nature&mdash;haunted by the genial spectre of Buster Keaton.</p>

Pushed up the Mountain

Julia Haslett

<p>PUSHED UP THE MOUNTAIN is a poetic and emotionally intimate film about plants and the people who care for them. Through the tale of the migrating rhododendron, now endangered in its native China, the film reveals how high the stakes are for all living organisms in this time of unprecedented destruction of the natural world. Beginning in my godfather&#39;s garden in the Scottish Highlands, the film travels between conservationists in Scotland and China who devote their lives to the rhododendron&rsquo;s survival. Patiently observed footage of conservationists at work combines with centuries-old landscape paintings and my speculative voice to create a thought-provoking film about human efforts to protect nature for and from ourselves.</p>

Ethereality

Kantarama Gahigiri

<p>Stranded in space for thirty years. How does it feel to finally come home? A reflection about migration and the sense of belonging.</p>

Father of the Cyborgs

David Burke

<p>Dr. Phil Kennedy was once f&ecirc;ted as a pioneering neuroscientist.</p> <p>In the late 1990s he made global headlines for implanting several wire electrodes in the brain of a paralysed man and then teaching the locked-in patient to control a computer cursor with his mind. Kennedy called his patient the world&rsquo;s &ldquo;first cyborg,&rdquo; and the press hailed his feat as the first time a person had ever communicated through a brain-computer interface. An article in The Washington Post began by describing him as a new Alexander Graham Bell and he became better known as &ldquo;The Father of the Cyborgs&rdquo;.</p> <p>From then on Phil Kennedy committed his life to the dream of developing ways to fully digitise a person&rsquo;s thoughts. Kennedy along with renowned futurists such as Elon Musk and Google&rsquo;s Ray Kurzweil believe what started with technologies to help the disabled may lead us to being barely recognisable as humans in the not so distant future.</p> <p>In 2014 after 30 years of laborious tinkering with brains, Kennedy ran out of funding to continue his research. In order to continue on his path toward human electrode implantation, Kennedy travelled to South America, had the top of his skull sawed off and had tiny electrodes implanted inside his brain in order to understand it better.</p> <p>Kennedy&rsquo;s South American surgery and high-risk self-experimentation has garnered a mixture of awe and condemnation from colleagues in the field. Paul Root Wolpe, the director of Emory University&rsquo;s Centre for Ethics, describes this ethical quandary as &ldquo;an interesting tension&rdquo;. &ldquo;Some have won the Nobel Prize from the results of self-experimentation, others have literally died from it&rdquo;.</p> <p>Juxtaposing the human side of Dr Kennedy&rsquo;s story with his synthetic vision of the future, he is now becoming increasingly concerned that the technology he helped pioneer may lead to unintended consequences in a future where technology and human brains combine.</p> <p>Stopping does not occur to Kennedy however and even after a close brush with brain damage he continues with the development of a technology he hopes will restore speech for patients who have lost the ability to communicate by accessing their brainwaves directly. The man known as &ldquo;The Father of the Cyborg&rdquo; still holds on to that most human of traits: hope.</p>

Gölgeler İçinde (In the shadows)

Erdem Tepegöz

<p>In a dystopia of undefined time a group of people living in a mining factory are being controlled by the omnipresent surveillance system of the Officials.<br /> Based on sorrow for the loss of his co-worker friend the protagonist, the Miner, begins to doubt the system he lives in. After he gets infected by a mysterious disease in the mines, he becomes sick and scars begin to appear on his body. He tries to hide this from other workers and the surveillance system by covering the scars with clothes and mud. In his fear and despair to be discovered the Miner begins to hope for help from marshes near the factory. This vain hope and strong doubt make him more weak and desperate over time. With the progression of the disease scars begin to appear all over his body, which makes him look like an animal. This is when he realizes that his existence depends on the destruction of the system which is dark better than he thought. He should be that monster to destroy it.</p>

Survivers

Carlos Gómez-Trigo

<p>Natural selection says that only those who adapt will survive. What if humans have become stupid?</p>

Objetos Rebeldes (Rebel Objects)

Carolina Arias Ortiz

<p>Carolina returns to Costa Rica to try to rebuild the relationship with her father. After a few months, her father is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.</p> <p>At that moment, Carolina meets Ifigenia, an archaeologist expert in the stone spheres found in the south of Costa Rica; the country&#39;s great enigma. She decides to follow Ifigenia&#39;s journey through an erased indigenous history.</p> <p>Through objects and their stories, Carolina learns a different way to relate to death.</p>

We Are As Gods

Jason Sussberg David Alvarado

<p>Facing the twin environmental crises of mass extinction and climate change, counterculture legend Stewart Brand proposes a potential pandora&rsquo;s box for conservation: using biotechnology to resurrect extinct species like the wooly mammoth. It&rsquo;s a crazy idea, but it&rsquo;s not surprising coming from Stewart, a futurist and popularizer of some of the most significant cultural and technological movements of our era, including psychedelics, the modern environmental movement, personal computers, long term thinking, and biotechnology. Stewart&rsquo;s methods are controversial, and his colleagues in the environmental movement believe he is meddling with nature and vow to stand in his way. But we are along for the journey as he travels to Siberia to search for mammoth specimens and explore the resurrection of the Mammoth Steppe in an effort to slow climate change and restore balance to this critical ecosystem.</p>

In Silico (2020)

Noah Hutton

<p>A young filmmaker sets out to document a brilliant neuroscientist who has become frustrated with his field&rsquo;s status quo. With time elapsing and millions of dollars on the line, In Silico explores an audacious 10-year quest to simulate the entire human brain on supercomputers. Along the way, it reveals the profound beauty of tiny mistakes and bold predictions &mdash; a controversial space where scientific process meets ego, and where the lines between objectivity and ambition blur.</p>

Hijo de Monarcas (Son of Monarchs)

Alexis Gambis

<p>After the death of his grandmother, a Mexican biologist living in New York returns to his hometown nestled in the majestic monarch butterfly forests of Michoac&aacute;n after many years. The journey forces him to confront past traumas and reflect on his new hybrid identity, launching him on a personal and spiritual metamorphosis.</p>

Letter from your Far-Off Country

Suneil Sanzgiri

<p>In this film shot on 16mm, Sanzgiri traces lines and lineages of ancestral memory, poetry and his history. A search for solidarity in the sounds and colours of a spontaneous movement in Delhi led by Muslim women, an Iqbal Bano song, images of B.R. Ambedkar &ndash; a radical anti-caste Dalit intellectual &ndash; all revolving around a letter addressed to a distant relative. Seeking to reclaim the past from erasure, and provide a journey towards a potential future.</p>

$75 000

Moïse Togo

<p style="text-align:justify">$75,000 highlights the biological aspect of albinism, which is a genetic and hereditary abnormality that affects not only pigmentation, bu also and above all the physical and moral conditions of people with albinism. These people are victims of discrimination, mutilation and ritual crimes in Africa.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>

Stolen Fish

Gosia Juszczak

<p>In the Gambia, the smallest country of mainland Africa, fish is now being powdered up by Chinese corporations and exported to Europe and China to feed animals in industrial farming. As a result, Gambians are being deprived of their primary source of protein, overfishing is depleting marine ecosystems. The film follows Abou, Mariama and Paul, three Gambians who share intimate stories of daily struggle, anger, hope and longing for their loved ones.<br /> <br /> The first film on Gambia&rsquo;s fishmeal factories offering a unique insight into untold drivers of migration and the role played by women in new economic systems. There&rsquo;s so much to worry about in the world but Stolen Fish is a 30 minute microcosm of what is wrong with it.</p>

End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock

Shannon Kring

<p>A group of indigenous women risk their lives to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which jeopardizes their land, water and entire way of life. Despite the desecration of their ancient burial and prayer sites, violent confrontations, and limited resources, these women refuse to back down. Calls for change reverberate nationally as the women of Standing Rock lead a tireless effort to defend their right to clean water and rich heritage.</p>

Wuhan Wuhan

Yung Chang

<p>With unprecedented access to Wuhan, China, at the peak of the pandemic lockdown, award-winning director Yung Chang looks beyond statistics and headlines to reveal the emotions and resilience at the core of our shared humanity.</p>

Kapaemahu

Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu Dean Hamer Joe Wilson

<p>Brought to life with lush animation and narrated through an ancient Hawaiian dialect, a tale unfolds of four mysterious stones on Waikiki Beach, their healing powers, and the male and female spirits living within them.</p>

Sea Dragon

James Morgan

<p>A young fossil hunter makes a groundbreaking discovery, challenging the worldview of 19th century England.</p> <p>More on the film at https://www.seadragonfilm.com/</p>

A Place in the Cosmos

Gavin Hipkins

<p>Located in rural Aotearoa New Zealand, a full-scale concrete adaptation of Stonehenge is an active observatory and portal to other worlds. Shot on Super 8mm, this end-of-time silent film navigates science fiction tropes through spatial circularity and cosmic rhythms.</p>

Symbiotic Earth: How Lynn Margulis Rocked the Boat and Started a Scientific Revolution

John Feldman

<p>Symbiotic Earth explores the life and ideas of Lynn Margulis, a brilliant and radical scientist, whose unconventional theories challenged the male-dominated scientific community and are today fundamentally changing how we look at our selves, evolution, and the environment.</p> <p>As a young scientist in the 1960s, Margulis was ridiculed when she first proposed that symbiosis was a key driver of evolution, but she persisted. Instead of the mechanistic view that life evolved through random genetic mutations and competition, she presented a symbiotic narrative in which bacteria joined together to create the complex cells that formed animals, plants and all other organisms &mdash; which together form a multi-dimensional living entity that covers the Earth. Humans are not the pinnacle of life with the right to exploit nature, but part of this complex cognitive system in which each of our actions has repercussions.</p> <p>Filmmaker John Feldman traveled globally to meet Margulis&rsquo; cutting-edge colleagues and continually asked: What happens when the truth changes? Symbiotic Earth examines the worldview that has led to climate change and extreme capitalism and offers a new approach to understanding life that encourages a sustainable and symbiotic lifestyle.</p>

Écoutez le battement de nos images (Listen to the Beats of our Images)

Maxime Jean-Baptiste Audrey Jean-Baptiste

<p>Based on audiovisual archives from the National Center for Space Studies (CNES),&nbsp;<em>Listen to the Beat of our Images</em>, is a film by Audrey and Maxime Jean-Baptiste which deals with the establishment of the Guyanese Space Center (Kourou, French Guiana), wishing to bring out the Guyanese population, a real out-of-frame of this space adventure. Combining field investigation and video-editing processes on archives, the film is a fictional documentary around a narrator, representative of a generation of Guianese who experienced as a spectator the transformation of their territory.</p>

80 000 Years Old

Christelle Lheureux

<p>It is summer in Normandy. C&eacute;line is working on an excavation site and takes the opportunity to spend a weekend in her childhood village, which she has not seen for a long time. Her archaeological research is mixed with more or less probable reunions during her walks.</p>

Humanity Has Not Yet Failed (Greta Thunberg)

Norma V. Toraya Jared P. Scott

<p>Climate activist Greta Thunberg juxtaposes the absurdity of political inaction with the straightforward high-stakes of the climate emergency.</p>

I Like Tomorrow

Jennifer Reeder and Nancy Andrews

<p>I Like Tomorrow is a sci-fi comedy musical that combines live action and animation. This short hybrid film is set in an orbiting space station where a lonely lady astronaut works out a love triangle between her past, present and future self. Each woman has a different but meaningful relationship to &quot;space&quot; and are all portrayed by the same actor (Michole Brianna White).</p>

This Mortal Plastik

Jess Irish

<p dir="ltr">A personal dive into the world&rsquo;s most impersonal substance: plastics. Amid the lockdown, a bereaved mother unfolds a surprising journey within and across oceans to understand the contemporary landscape of single-use synthetics. From the noble intentions behind its invention to scales of havoc it has wrought, this experimental documentary brings together art, history, science, and the everyday. Playfully crafted with hand-drawn illustrations and poetic interludes, this evocative &ldquo;pause between deep time and no time&rdquo; will change how you think about this ordinary &ldquo;thing without thingness.&rdquo;&nbsp;</p> <p><br /> &nbsp;</p>

Einstein Telescope

Evgenia Alexandrova

<p>Young astrophysical Skye is part of a research project on black holes. To this end, she joins the observatory Einstein&#39;s Telescope on a remote island in the Arctic. In this particular place, haunted by her past, space gradually becomes an obsession.</p>

A Hole

Molly Murphy

<p>The world is about to be swallowed by a black hole. Meteorites fall from the sky, ocean waves take on enormous new heights, and chaos abounds in city streets as people confront their looming demise. The world turns to wealthy entrepreneur, Rob Bilford, whose &ldquo;Escape Lottery&rdquo; offers the only chance at continuing the human legacy. Wary of the entire structure surrounding this celebrated lottery, Rana Ralorina, a surfer, decides to ditch her lottery ticket for the chance to catch a cosmic wave. In and outside of a black hole&rsquo;s gravitational pull, Rob and Rana discover time to take on a new meaning...</p>

Tiong Bahru Social Club

Bee Thiam Tan

<p>Ah Bee goes on a comedic odyssey through Tiong Bahru Social Club, a data-driven project to create the happiest neighbourhood in the world. Little by little Ah Bee&rsquo;s encounters with the neighbourhood&rsquo;s residents reveal the absurdity of life.<br /> &nbsp;</p>

Shattering Stars

Peter Galison

<p>A little-told chapter in the story of black holes begins in 1930 Madras, India. 19-year-old Indian physics prodigy Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (Chandra) is awarded a scholarship to go to England to study with Sir Arthur Eddington, the world&rsquo;s most famous astronomer. &nbsp;While on his sea voyage, young Chandra makes a major discovery that goes against everything his new advisor believes: that sufficiently massive stars, when they use the last of their fuel, must be crushed by gravity and collapse to something far more dense and mysterious than any object anyone has known. After years of work to refine this result under his mentor&#39;s watchful eye, at the most public of forums, Eddington denounces his prot&eacute;g&eacute; and his work, shattering him, driving Chandra from England to the United States. Despite his humiliation, Chandra perseveres, but pursues a more conservative path in physics, never again braving the limelight. Nearly a half-century later in 1983, Chandrasekhar is awarded the Nobel Prize for the work begun on board that ship to England. &ldquo;Shattering Stars&rdquo; tells the story of ambition and betrayal, of loss and perseverance at the pinnacle of scientific research. Making use of original audio recordings of Chandrasekhar, the film alternates its limited-motion animation between a representational-documentary and imaginative-subjective style.</p>

The Mushroom Speaks

Marion Neumann

<p>THE MUSHROOM SPEAKS&nbsp;explores the healing qualities of fungi and their ability to regenerate. This personal journey takes us on a walk alongside parasites, symbionts and decomposers offering ideas of both interconnectedness and collaboration. Driven by a vision of resistance, the encounters seek possibilities of renewal and question what connects us when the world seems to be falling apart. With mushrooms and their allies, the film invites us to imagine a myco-cultural (r)evolution. What if the fungus could help us address and radically change our relationship to this world?</p>

Who Is Afraid of Ideology? Part 3 Micro Resistances

Marwa Arsanios

<p>Marwa Arsanios&rsquo; trilogy&nbsp;<em>Who Is Afraid of Ideology?&nbsp;</em>weaves an intersectional path through the struggles of women &minus; in places such as Northern Syria and Colombia &minus; to claim the right to the land and to reconnect with nature in an unmediated way.&nbsp;<em>Part 3 Micro Resistancies</em><strong>&nbsp;</strong>takes place in Tolimo, and focuses on the ongoing systemic war waged by transnational corporations against the smallest and the most essential element of life &minus; the seed.&nbsp;<em>(&Ouml;v&uuml;l &Ouml;. Durmusoglu)</em></p>

Under Control

Ville Koskinen

<p>Under Control shows human action from the insect&#39;s level. The botanical garden is an artificial nature-like installation where each room has its own microclimate. Despite&nbsp; human attempts to control the environment, pests are spreading and eating the plants all over the garden. The gardeners are fighting against the pests with cryptobugs; thousands of ladybirds that are specially bred for killing and imported from abroad. But since cryptobugs alone don&rsquo;t solve the problem, the gardeners have to rely on the help of an exterminator who kills the pests as well as all the other insects with poisons. As the remedies get harsher, the bystanders will have to face the consequences.</p>

Swallow the Universe

Nieto

<p>The grandiloquent blood-and-thunder saga of a young child lost in Manchuria&rsquo;s deep jungles. His sudden presence creates complete anarchy in the fauna&rsquo;s primitive world, which was until-then perfectly organized.</p>

A Little Stone Worth Gold (Petit Caillou)

Alize Arnal Virginie Texier Ludovic Plisson Quentin Greiner

<p>Little stone is a mineral necessary for the manufacture of electronic devices. An epic story that begins in the mines of Congo, goes through the assembly factories in China, lands in the hands of consumers, and ends up in electronic waste dumps in Ghana.</p>

The Lake at the Bottom of the World

Kathy Kasic

<p>An international team of scientists venture into the virtually unknown interior of Antarctica to explore a lake buried 3,600 feet beneath the ice. Their success hinges on the performance of their custom-built hot water drill and their ability to work as a team in the harshest climate on the planet. As they struggle against the ferocity of the ice and wind to unravel mysteries buried deep under Antarctica, they consider how our relationship with nature &ndash; and with one another &mdash; will impact humanity&rsquo;s future and the future of all life on our rapidly changing planet.</p>

The Return

Eriberto Gualinga Marc Silver

<p>While millions of people around the world have been forced into lockdown amid the coronavirus crisis, a family in the Ecuadorian Amazon has opted to move deeper into the relative safety of the jungle. As they reconnect with dormant ancestral knowledge, away from the distractions of modern life, their affinity with nature begins to flourish. As news spreads that Ecuador might lift lockdown soon, will the family stay?</p>

Our Ark (2021)

Deniz Tortum Kathryn Hamilton

<p>We are backing up the planet, creating 3D models of animals, rainforests, cities and people. We are archiving as if ecological collapse could be staved off through some digital Noah&rsquo;s Ark of beasts and objects. OUR ARK is an essay film on our efforts to create a virtual replica of the real world.</p>

A.rtificial I.mmortality

Ann Shin

<p>If computers could let you live forever, would you? When our minds and memories can be digitized, self-help guru Deepak Chopra and leading robotics engineers envision virtual clones that don&#39;t need a body to survive.</p>

A Mild Touch of Cancer

Annie Goldson

<p>If you were about to die, how would you live?&nbsp;Kiwi David Downs had just months to live when he entered a clinical trial of an innovative cancer treatment called CAR T-cell therapy&nbsp;in Boston. Within weeks, he was in complete remission, and two years later he is deemed cured. Now, he has dedicated himself to helping others in Aotearoa NZ facing their own cancer journeys. With him, we follow their stories of life and death while exploring the fascinating science and history of this groundbreaking treatment.</p>

In Event of Moon Disaster

Halsey Burgund Francesca Panetta

<p dir="ltr">In July 1969, much of the world celebrated the &ldquo;giant leap for mankind&rdquo; that the successful moon landing constituted. In 2020, nothing is quite so straightforward. In Event of Moon Disaster illustrates the possibilities of deepfake technologies by reimagining this seminal event.</p> <p dir="ltr">What if the Apollo 11 mission had gone wrong and the astronauts had not been able to return home? A contingency speech for this possibility was prepared, but never delivered by President Nixon &ndash; until now. The immersive project invites you into this alternative history and asks us all to consider how new technologies can bend, redirect and obfuscate the truth around us.</p>

Holgut

Liesbeth de Ceulaer

<p>The Siberian permafrost is melting, ancient bones rise up from the ground and wild animals seem to have disappeared.&nbsp;<em>Holgut</em>&nbsp;is a contemporary tale based on historical, mythological and current stories. Two brothers and a scientist venture into the vast Yakutian wilderness on two quests. Roman and Kyym hunt for a rare reindeer while Semyon scourges for a viable cell of the mammoth, which he needs to clone the extinct animal. The film boldly combines elements of fiction and documentary and maneuvers seemingly effortless from a captivating reality to visual poetry. Amidst a Siberian Ivory Rush, science fiction seems to become reality and reality seems to become myth.</p>

The Quintessence

Pamela Breda

<p>Constructed during a three-year-long research period that involved visits to more than 20 centers and laboratories dedicated to the advanced research of outer space,&nbsp;<em>The Quintessence</em>&nbsp;considers the scientific study of outer space as a narrative, and analyses the hidden dreams and expectations of those shaping contemporary research about the universe. Audio interviews with scientists provide an intimate insight into astrophysicists&rsquo; ideas and creative intuitions, moving beyond the traditional academic representation of scientists as individuals possessing an unquestionable knowledge of the universe, while the visuals generate a sensorial representation of highly-secluded scientific laboratories, often situated in remote locations and usually not accessible to the general public. Looking into the nature of scientific progress, and our role as investigators of the universe, this film provides a unique angle on the act of looking at the stars.</p>