AFO 58th Edition - 2023

3 – 2 – 1 Liftoff! (3 – 2 – 1 Start!)

Martin Živocký Filip Veselý

In the planetarium, we are used to watching films that show us the universe up close. What we don't see are the complications that scientists encounter in trying to leave Earth and approach its far reaches. Elon the hamster and his robotic companion guide the audience through this process. The Krutart studio film combines a planetarium experience with an exciting animated story. It is also unique in its emphasis on explaining physical phenomena in collaboration with experts. So it is a film full of love for science and ingenuity of an unusual duo.

300 Trillion – The Debt Trap

Rudolph Herzog

Social inequality is at an all-time high, influenced by racial and generational factors with very few ways to escape – that is the reality of people in debt all over the world. The vicious cycle of loans, debts, followed by more loans sucks people in like a black hole, often without a chance to escape. Personal debt may seem insignificant compared to immense state and global debt, but it can freeze a family's life and future, leaving them completely stuck. Financial experts and debtors themselves share their experience with the mechanisms of debt and the pitfalls of a frustrating struggle with it.

306 Hollywood

Elan Bogarín Jonathan Bogarín

When two siblings undertake an archaeological excavation of their late grandmother's house, they embark on a magical-realist journey in search of what life remains in the objects we leave behind.

A History of the World According to Getty Images

Richard Misek

This thought-provoking short film examines the meaning of the term "public domain," and what happens to images whose copyright has expired and theoretically become freely available to all. Why is it that this type of image so often falls into the hands of commercial organizations such as Getty Images, which then requires payment to use them? What are the implications of putting images of historical events behind a paywall?
Archive footage of events such as the 1937 Hindenburg airship disaster and the US atom bomb tests on Bikini Atoll in the 1940s and 50s are etched into our collective memory. This documentary argues that such images should not be held hostage by profit-motivated parties. It's a philosophy that the film itself puts into practice, ingeniously liberating this footage from the grip of commercial interests.

After Nature

Esther Elmholt

Four scientists and one artist fight to mitigate the mass extinction and to understand how our pursuit of prosperity has caused an ecological collapse.

Po nás potopa (After Us, the Flood)

Dorota Vlnová

"Why is it so hot?" asks a young girl an online application. "It's due to the climate crisis." We don´t have to go to burning Australia or melting Antarctica to find the consequences of the climate crisis. We already feel them in our everyday lives wherever we live. The documentary After Us, The Flood explores the impacts of climate change on people and nature in Slovakia, a small landlocked country in Central Europe. The ice caves of Slovakia are fast melting, long-lasting droughts are destroying the crops and extreme heat threatens people´s health. But that's not all. If we want to avoid the worst-case scenario each of us must answer a simple question: "How do you want to continue?"

All That Breathes

Shaunak Sen

Brothers Saud and Nadeem were raised looking at a sky speckled with black kites, watching as relatives tossed meat up to these birds of prey. Muslim belief held that feeding the kites would expel troubles. Now, birds are falling from the polluted, opaque skies of New Delhi and the two brothers have made it their life's work to care for the injured black kites. Shaunak Sen's intricately layered portrait reveals an evolving city and a fraternal relationship bonded by purpose. The film's patient, roaming camera skillfully uses scale and perspective to draw attention to the interconnectedness of an ecosystem — one that humans are a part of, not apart from. The social unrest that begins to materialize in the streets is seen through the perspectives of the brothers and their family, as well as the insects and animals that share the urban landscape. There is both cruelty and tenderness in nature, and Sen elegantly captures how they coexist, while emphasizing the ways in which all living beings must evolve to survive.

Aphotic Zone

Emilija Škarnulyté

The submarine images reveal the mysterious beauty of the aphotic zone, where less than 1% of sunlight reaches. The footage of the Gulf of Mexico at the depth of four kilometres follows a coral thriving off the warming ocean caused by human activity.

Baron Arthur Kraus

Matouš Kotěra

Baron Arthur Kraus was a renaissance man who, especially in astronomy, surpassed his time. The film summarises the impact of a visionary, a traveller, a populariser, a scientist, an athlete, and a pioneer of aviation. Born in Pardubice in 1912, Kraus opened the first public observatory in central Europe. In wartime, the scientist participated in the foundation of Czech Astronomical Society and created one of the oldest methods for observing the Sun. What did his lab look like and what was his contribution to sport?

Bee Conscious (2021)

Kate Campolieta

In a small New England suburb, a retired couple takes environmentally-friendly gardening from a hobby to a way of life as they work to fight climate change's devastation of nature.

BIas (2018)

Robin Hauser

"I am not a racist, but…" How many times have you heard this sentence in the media, on the streets, or at home? Language can reveal people's prejudices. How can we fight against it? While we may consider ourselves to be tolerant, hidden prejudices can shape us more than we admit. Prejudices against race, gender, and religion shapes all aspects of modern society. In her documentary Bias, Robin Hauser examines the roots and results of prejudice and potential ways to deal with it.

Camille & Ulysse

Diana Toucedo

Camille and Ulysse tell their stories with the voices of biologist, philosopher, and feminist Donna Haraway and philosopher Vinciane Despret. Science meets fiction and animation meets documentary resulting in a unique experience. The story of community life on a ruined planet introduces the topic of the symbiotic relationship between people and other living organisms, mutual understanding, and the future of the Earth. Based on the works of Haraway and Despret, the film was created as a part of the Science Friction exhibition in the Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona and is notable for its storytelling and animation.

Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest

Mads Hedegaard

Kim Cannon Arm, the legend of arcades, decides to break the world game record in Gyruss. Luckily, he has similarly inclined friends happy to support him in the attempt to play the game for more than 100 hours straight. Superficially, the documentary follows the regulars from the Bip Bip Bar gaming den full of 1980s arcades. However, a humanist essay on the power of friendship underneath is uncovered. Scientists and artists by profession, gamers by heart, all decide to honour the memory of a friend in their own way.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Justin Pemberton

This compelling documentary is based on the international bestseller by Thomas Piketty. It is a journey to wealth and power that breaks down the widespread assumption that capital accumulation goes hand in hand with social progress. The film fundamentally sheds new light on today's growing economic inequalities. The narrative travels through time and combines accessible pop culture references with interviews with some of the world's most influential experts, providing an insightful and empowering insight into the past and the future.

Zajaté melodie (Captured Melodies)

Milan Raym

A popular science film or a "short industrial report" about the production of gramophone records at the Esta factory. In this protectorate film, director Milan Raym captured in detail the individual phases of the industrial production of so-called shellac records, the predecessors of today's vinyl. It follows the path of the musical performance of Suk's Symphony Asrael performed by the Czech Philharmonic conducted by Rafael Kubelík, from engraving with a sapphire needle into polished wax through chemical processing, matrix production and pressing to the final recording medium, or rather, into the listeners' homes.

CARA-B

Anna Mundet Molas

CARA-B is a desktop documentary that focuses on the golden record that NASA sent into space in the late 1970s. In an essayistic format, the piece reflects on issues such as the power of scientific discourse to produce revisions of the world, the future, and humanity, the evolution of the concept of the archive, and the resignification of borders in the rhetoric of space colonialism.

Chemobrionics (Chemobrionics)

Jitka Čejková

"Chemobrionics" explores a new multidisciplinary field of science that examines the properties of inorganic substances, highlighting their similarities to the behavior of living systems. The film showcases the beauty of a simple experiment known as "chemical gardening," where a metal salt crystal is placed into water glass. Viewers are treated to a mesmerizing display of colors and the slow, hypnotic growth of tubular structures that resemble plants or fungi. This visual poem bridges art and science, prompting contemplation of nature's ability to present inanimate objects that mimic life.

Chronos (1985)

Ron Fricke

Chronos tells the story of civilisations through a symphony of music and imagery. Time-lapse footage perceives life as an ever-changing phenomenon, a collection of seemingly slow motions, both organic and man-made, majestic, and eternal. Ron Fricke, the director of cult essay documentaries, is a prominent cinematographer who designed and constructed a special 65 mm camera using film with 15 perforations and a unique image motion control system. Chronos was released in the IMAX format and has been screened in science museums since.

Collisions (2022)

Roopa Gogineni Trevor Snapp

Every year, more than 80,000 meteorites collide with Earth. Many fall into the arid sands of the Sahara, where they are spotted by passing nomads. Some are worth much more than gold, while others contain clues to the deep history of our solar system. Now everyone is searching for them.

Constant

Sasha Litvintseva Beny Wagner

"Constant" is a journey through the social and political histories of measurement. For most of recorded history, the human body was the measure of all things. "Constant" asks what led measurement to depart from the body and become a science unto itself. The film explores three shifts in the history of measurement standardization, from the land surveying that drove Early Modern European land privatization, to the French Revolution that drove the Metric Revolution, to the conceptual dematerialisation of measurement in the contemporary era of Big Science. Each chapter traces the relationship of measurement standardization to ideas of egalitarianism, agency, justice, and power. Cinematic and technical images that begin as products of measurement systems are stretched beyond their functions to describe the resistance of lived experience to symbolic abstractions.

Cracking COVID

Sonya Pemberton

CRACKING COVID is a real-time journey through Australia's unique pandemic experience. As teams of scientists race to unlock the secrets of the virus, researchers work to build a vaccine from scratch, and three patients confront very different symptoms of a terrifying new disease. Professor Peter Doherty – who won a Nobel Prize for his discoveries about the human immune system – joins Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Sonya Pemberton, providing warm and witty expert insight. We discover how, in uncertain times, we often have little choice but to improvise. CRACKING COVID is a surprisingly intimate story of Australia's race against the virus – as it happened, in the moment.

Cry, My River (2022)

Olesia Morhunets-Isaienko

That sip of water, which you've just taken, contains dinosaurs' urine. Shocking content? No. A rock-solid truth. Impressive, isn't it? First, we scrunch our faces in disgust, but then we pause to think: if even such an ancient creature is here in our present day, then what are the consequences of our own life activity and how are they present in everything we consume? Everything we poor out and throw out into the water or when we relieve ourselves – all that remains in the water. The water doesn't run to another planet! That water cycle, which we've known since school years, is circulating in our blood too. Thus, everything we dump returns to our blood, our lymph, our bladder, our life. We are all connected by this! Once every person on the planet reaches this conclusion, our life will change and we'll come back to metaphorical Eden, from which we were banished because of thirst for knowledge.

Czech Weather (2023)

David Sís

Weather is the go-to topic of small talk. We experience it every day and know that it can bring us peace and incredible beauty, as well as terrible disasters. Heat, water, wind. The three basic components that make up the weather. The recipe for the weather is very simple. At AFO, we will be screening parts of the documentary series dedicated to water and air. Come and learn about our weather. You may even get an answer to what's behind the strange changes in temperatures in recent years.

De Humani Corporis Fabrica

Véréna Paravel Lucien Castaing-Taylor

An examination of the human body as an extraordinary landscape that is also otherworldly and harrowing, from five hospitals in northern Paris neighbourhoods.

DIE TOTEN VÖGEL SIND OBEN (Dead Birds Flying High)

Sönje Storm

Birds, bugs and butterflies: The collection of northern German farmer and photographer Jürgen Friedrich Mahrt (1882 -1940) is odd and a little bit uncanny. The documentary Dead Birds Flying High explores the quiet eccentric's life and work. In 1919 he began to photograph the local flora and fauna and started to observe the extinction of species.

Deep Rising

Matthieu Rytz

Matthieu Rytz returns to Sundance (Anote's Ark, 2018 Sundance Film Festival) with this up-to-the-minute tale of geopolitical, scientific, and corporate intrigue that exposes the machinations of a secretive organization empowered to greenlight massive extraction of metals from the deep seafloor that are deemed essential to the electric battery revolution.
Narrated by Jason Momoa, Deep Rising illuminates the vital relationship between the deep ocean and sustaining life on Earth. The documentary also follows mining startup The Metals Company, as it pursues funding, public favor, and permission from the International Seabed Authority to mine wide swathes of the Pacific Ocean floor.
Rytz's fly-on-the-wall access observes extraction companies as they co-opt scientific studies and deliver pitches to investors, proposing how the costs of industrializing our Earth's last pristine environment can be justified to access metals they claim will benefit all of mankind. As oil conglomerates pivot investments to deep-ocean mining, Deep Rising examines humanity's destructive pattern of extracting materials for profit and asks why we don't choose, instead, to develop abundant resources to solve our energy problems.

Does Space Dream in Bits (2022)

Alexandra Yakovleva

In the 20th century the world has finally supplied humanity with the machine for the ultimate answers. And so, burdened with the eternal questions of meaning, life and existence the filmmaker departs on a trip through the world wide web.

Eduard Štorch, mammoth hunter

Josef Císařovský

Eduard Štorch (1878–1956) was the first writer in the Czech lands and in the world to set his stories in prehistoric times. It's quite ironic that he himself considered his books set in the Stone Age and Bronze Age to be mere accessories to his main life calling as a professional teacher. Another profession that Štorch took up was archaeology. An unusual finding at a sewer excavation site prompted Štorch to write his most famous work: The Mammoth Hunter, which has been released in over twenty editions and sold over half a million copies. The book was published at least ten times in German and even translated into Japanese.

Fantastic Therapy (2022)

Anna Rotreklová

In the documentary, a very promising way of treating some mental illnesses is presented, which is based on psychotherapy and the use of psychedelic substances, more precisely psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. In a few years, this form of therapy will probably be firmly established among established medical procedures and is already covered by some health insurance companies. The documentary was filmed in cooperation with the only clinic in the Czech Republic "Psyon - Psychedelic Clinic". Here, they legally use the substance ketamine for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Speaking psychotherapists, psychologists and doctors also mention other psychedelic substances that are officially used so far only in experimental studies. In resistant depression, where all conventional treatment fails, this form of therapy is proving to be an absolute breakthrough. The film also includes statements from clients who underwent ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. They talk about their psychedelic session experiences and what the treatment has brought them.

Fathom

Drew Xanthopoulos

The world's most dedicated whale researchers, exploring both their groundbreaking work and how a life at sea has shaped them.

Finding the Man of Sorrows

Amálie Kovářová

When the art historian Štěpán Vácha discovered a painting from an unknown painter in the Břevnov Monastery, the search for its origins began. Who painted it? This is the first among many questions arising in this investigation. Amálie Kovářová records the detective work in several chapters and gives an impressive presentation of the circumstances of the newly discovered work of art. Witness exciting debates on authorship, unexpected discoveries, and above all, the tremendous love for art and restoration work.

Fire of Love

Sara Dosa

Katia and Maurice Krafft loved two things — each other and volcanoes. For two decades, the daring French volcanologist couple roamed the planet, chasing eruptions, documenting their discoveries. Ultimately, they lost their lives in a 1991 volcanic explosion, leaving a legacy that forever enriched our knowledge of the natural world. Director Sara Dosa and the filmmaking team fashion a lyrical celebration of the intrepid scientists' spirit of adventure, drawing from the Kraffts' spectacular archive. Fire of Love tells a story of primordial creation & destruction, following two bold explorers as they venture into the unknown, all for the sake of love.

Forests of the Future (2022)

Jana Škopková

Czech woods and forests are a chest of treasures both big and small. From camps, mushrooming, and a shared walk, we turn to the woods to better our health and knowledge. Forests are a field of countless visible wars. The invasion of bark beetles, drought, and human ignorance can radically influence whether future generations will still be able to enjoy everything the forests offer. Scientists and rangers join forces to help fight these wars with innovation, education, and drones.

Free Money (2022)

Sam Soko Lauren DeFilippo

When universal basic income (UBI) comes to the Kenyan village of Kogutu, lives are forever changed. GiveDirectly, one of the fastest growing nonprofits of the 21st century, is sending free money for twelve years as part of the world's largest UBI experiment. Filmmakers Lauren DeFilippo and Sam Soko juxtapose the story of these young economists, bankrolled by Silicon Valley and convinced that they have found an infallible algorithm to end world poverty, with portraits of local Kenyans whose lives are being dramatically impacted for better and for worse.

Genetic Me (2014)

Pernille Rose Grønkjær

What is genetics? Through her quest to understand who she is, Lone Frank, a science journalist, takes us to the heart of the latest genetic research. This film humorously addresses the challenges of genetics and its fascinating discoveries.

Girlsboysmix (2020)

Lara Aerts Els van Driel

Society divides us by sex into male and female. However, nature is unpredictable and can combine both into one. Where does one belong, then? Can they fit in?

Grassland (2022)

Katie Marion Biggar

Join the journey through the literary and ecological landscapes of South Africa, from the poignant words of Alan Paton's "Cry, the Beloved Country" to the heartwarming image of a young biologist's encounter with the elusive blue swallow. With each passing moment, the future of this rare and precious bird hangs in the balance, and its fate uncertain.

Gregor Mendel and the mystery of peas

David Súkup

As a little boy, Johann asked many questions and spent his whole life searching for answers. In their short animated film made for the Brno Observatory and Planetarium, Vendula Chalánková and Ján Obyšovský follow the life story of the modest scientist from Hynčice.

Happy End (1967)

Oldřich Lipský

A story of a double homicide convict is not as interesting, unless narrated backwards. Directed by Oldřich Lipský, it remains the most distinctive narrative experiment of Czechoslovakian filmmaking.

Haulout (2022)

Evgenia Arbugaeva Maxim Arbugaev

On a remote coast of the Russian Arctic in a wind-battered hut, a lonely man waits to witness an ancient gathering. But warming seas and rising temperatures bring an unexpected change, and he soon finds himself overwhelmed.

Herbaria

Leandro Listorti

As an excursion to the work of botanical and film preservation, "Herbaria" explores in its invisible processes the artistic and political derivations that connect them.
Sustained in a narration where times and spaces seem to merge, the records invite us to the fascinating universe of preserving the beauty and memory of a world that insists on disappearing.

Hollow Tree

Kira Akerman

Hollow Tree is about three teenagers coming of age in their sinking homeland of Louisiana. For the first time, they notice the Mississippi River's engineering, stumps of cypress trees, and billowing smokestacks. Their different perspectives — as Indigenous, white, and Angolan young women — shape their story of the climate crisis.

HOOD140

Jakob Jakubowski

Enter the world of liberated, virtual architecture, where tearing yourself away will be the most challenging part. Architecture that blurs the distinctions between music, image, and impression. A psychedelic mockument about futuristic architecture.

Human Nature

Adam Bolt

The biggest tech revolution of the 21st Century isn't digital, it's biological. A breakthrough called CRISPR has given us unprecedented control over the basic building blocks of life. It opens the door to curing diseases, reshaping the biosphere, and designing our own children.

Lidi(Humans)

Kateř Tureček

On the one hand, the multi-layered film functions as an autobiographical portrait of a non-binary person, but at the same time it presents the wide range of difficulties and joys that trans and non-binary people in the Czech Republic go through. The personal is political in this film, which is why the kaleidoscope of situations includes intimate conversations with their mother over fried schnitzels, shots from Ride of the Kings, costumed festivities in the Slovácko region, talking about their coming out around the fire, and serious topics of discriminatory Czech legislation regarding trans people. The informal character of the film is enhanced by authentic interviews and handheld camera footage accompanying the lives of the protagonists.

I Miss You, Marius

Péter Becz

Abdi Hedayat, the conservator of the Natural History Museum of Copenhagen routinely performs public dissections on animals. Scared, excited, nervous and smiling faces of children watch as Abdi cuts, skins and gutls. An antarctic wolf, a python and a sumatran tiger loose their skins and fur. Animals transform from flesh and blood into scientific artifacts in front the eyes of children. We gain insight into a strange and bizarre scientific ritual. The same taboo challenging tradition that made the young giraffe of the Copanhagen Zoo, Marius famous all around the world. I Miss You, Marius, a meditative, optimistic and humanistic film chasing the ghost of a dead giraffe uncovers the relation between the modern human and nature and how we pass that relation to the next generation. Is there any place left for innocence if exposed to the answers of science too early?

Interspecies Robot Sex

Miram Simun

As bee colonies face global collapse, human farm laborers in China and ROBOBEE engineers in the US attempt to take over the labor of pollination from bees, with human-hand and robot labor. Labor costs in China are becoming too expensive, so pear-producing towns turn to pear-blossom tourism as a way to survive. Meanwhile we learn that the ROBOBEE is too expensive for agricultural use, and is rather doomed for military 'search and rescue.' We observe the transition of capital extraction from nature first as nutrition (agriculture), then as representation (tourism), and finally as evolutionary design (engineering). As the meaning of the word 'drone' moves from male bee to flying robot to bee-inspired-flying-robot, the metaphor folds back in on itself.
How will humans (and their robots) continue the reproduction of fruits after the bees are gone? An investigation into two responses to colony collapse disorder - a compendium of forces that threaten the extinction of honey bees, a 'companion species' upon whom the global agricultural system depends on.
In China, human laborers inseminate pear flowers by hand, one-by-one, at an industrial scale. Biomemetic design is done with cigarette filters on a tiny family farm in Cangxi, and with chicken feathers on the largest fruit orchard in the world in Anhui. Every spring, 7,000 day laborers arrive in Anhui to inseminate pear flowers.
As Chinese salaries grow, pollination labor is becoming too expensive for pear production to remain profitable, and simultaneously the middle class has given rise to the domestic Chinese tourist. A rural town invents a 'traditional pear blossom festival,' and in the hope that if there are no pears in the future, at least the flowers will attract tourists and their money. A new way to extract capital from pear trees - through symbolic representation - selfies with flowers galore - rather than as caloric nutrition as pears.
Meanwhile at a Harvard University laboratory, engineers are building the Robobee - tiny drones designed in close study of insect morphology, ostensibly for 'artificial pollination.' Evolutionary design is extracted from natural systems in order to build efficient robot drone 'bees' - folding the drone metaphor back in on itself. The preposterous nature of replacing complex and interdependent ecological systems with robots is not lost on the lead engineers, and we learn that the Robobee is destined for activities in the world beyond just pollination.
An investigation of life and death; labor and technology; and interspecies sex in an era of late-stage capitalism and ecological crisis.

Into the Wilderness (2021)

David Brázda

We don't have to go far to reach nature. Wilderness can be found just around the corner. What is hiding in our vicinity? With Prokop Pithart, we visit the banks of Czech rivers, ponds and forests, where wolves run free and owls hoot at night. The camera discovers the landscape's secrets and closely follows its animal inhabitants. Sometimes all you need to do is sit still and watch. We will spend the day in the shoes of an animal rescuer and set out for a night expedition. The series presents the relationship between man and Czech nature and shows how easily an ordinary walk can become an adventure.

Investigators / Bioresonance

Peter POkorny

Slovak-Czech documentary series that follows Investigators who are trying to find evidence of the existence of supernatural phenomena. Their first clue was bioresonance. It is a controversial method of alternative medicine that is currently used by several certified doctors. Official science and medicine claim that bioresonance does not work because it is based on physical nonsense, but is it really so? Investigators are ready to explore Bioresonance and try it on their own skin.

Invisible Landscapes (2022)

Ivo Bystřičan

It sounds like a bird's song, and you can't take your ears off it. But it's not – it's just the popping bubbles of a melting glacier. A group of musicians equipped with sensitive microphones and headphones set out on an exploration. They head to places in the Czech and Icelandic countryside both marred by industry
and untouched by man to discover and understand the sound of catastrophe – the sound of ongoing climate change, which in itself can be far more beautiful, and more imaginative, than what it heralds. While sight allows phenomena and things to be encompassed in a static state and in a certain entirety,
hearing allows us to understand how they affect and clash with their surroundings. Sound is the consequence of an event that happened in the past and points towards a future now being decided, one that may potentially be inevitable and destructive for us. It cannot yet be seen in the invisible landscapes, but – if we listen carefully – it is already there.

Iota Period Omega

Alexis Alexiou

The heroine of I.O addresses us from a dystopian future affected by climate change, in which people lose empathy and emotions. A film blending sci-fi and documentary presents a commentary on memory, the future, and the film medium itself.

Jeseníky – The Kingdom of the Mountain Wilderness

Marián Polák

Survival in the wilderness is anything but simple. Yet, the unique flora and fauna of Jeseníky managed to adapt perfectly to the harsh environment. Its beauty is captured over the four years it took to film this documentary. Jeseníky are not just mountain ranges and forests. It is a diverse region that holds many streams, rock formations, natural transition zones, (sub)alpine heathlands, the Velká kotlina cirque, meadows, and peat bogs. A miniature camera takes us to mysterious places off the beaten track, capturing the local cycle of life.

Jurassic Cash

Xavier Lefebvre

Anyone who went through the "dinosaur period" as a child probably wanted a dinosaur of their own at some point. This dream may come true for some - at least in a sense.
The film offers a layered insight into the controversial practice of auctioning dinosaur bones. It speaks to collectors, excited about the skeleton of an exclusive sauropod in their living room, but also to scientists, concerned about the market, which makes it difficult for museums and laboratories to access the finds. A triceratops named Big John becomes the subject of their common interest.

Keeper of Time

Michael Culyba

It dictates our routine, structures social rules. We hope for its healing powers as much as we fear its abrasive touch. The human effort to capture time is a wide spectrum - from stone circles, through alarm clocks and cuckoo clocks, to the Prague Astronomical Clock. We measure it in notches and inverted sheets. We carry it in our pockets or on our wrists as products of the incredibly detailed and delicate work of watchmakers. The film introduces the field, enjoying its deserved admiration, with the help of the insight of craftsmen, collectors, physicists and philosophers.

Naděje až do konce (Keeping the Faith)

Veronika Stehlíková

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis has affected the lives of the film's four protagonists. Each of them is trying to cope with the incurable disease by filling their remaining time in the most meaningful way. Veronika Stehlíková's longitudinal documentary presents life with the neuromuscular disease ALS, which causes a gradual weakening of the muscles, culminating in total paralysis. There is no cure as yet, and the average life expectancy is two to five years. Alena, Jarča, Tomáš, and Vladimír are aware of this certainty. Yet over four years of filming, they have not lost hope. With all their strength – physical and mental – and the support of family and friends, they continue to travel, dance, love... Touching, as well as unexpectedly humorous, moments emerge from the perceptive observation of everyday situations.

Let There Be Water!

Karel Žalud

Can the Czech Republic leave a lasting mark on EXPO 2020 and create a project that will help the world? Such an attempt was made in 2020 in Dubai by a team led by Jiří František Potužník. The documentary of Karel Žalud follows Potužník's difficult journey along with seven other creators of an invention that can create oases by extracting water from the air. This documentary reflects on the events surrounding EXPO 2020 and the broader context of current water shortages, which is not just an issue in arid desert areas.

Lithospheric Transference (Norge)

Hans Baumann

What is hidden in the ground we walk on every day? We now have a unique opportunity to take a closer look. Climate change and industry are etched into every stone, and the Earth has the memory of an elephant

Log From Site A

Marina Luccioni

Set in Tucson, Arizona "Log from site A" is a short experimental documentary about science and the use of deconstruction and fragmentation to understand relationships. Two students study the toxicity of Sonoran Desert toads in the midst of a dry year, lacking monsoon rains. This is the flip-book of things they found, but couldn't explain, with their science. We offer a film although really what we owe is a song to the Tucson desert.

Lost Women Art

Susanne Radelhof

Women have always written art history and worked on eye-level with their male contemporaries. Together they claimed new paths and caused sensations – but despite this neither their names nor their works are known today. Up to this day women play only minor roles in the canon of art and if they are remembered at all, it is as "exceptions".

Made to Measure (2021)

Moritz Riesewieck Hans Block Cosima Terrasse

Made to Measure is an experiment that asks if you can reconstruct a person based solely on their digital data trail. Can you build a doppelganger of a person you don't even know? Record, recreate, and replay the life of someone and their personality in detail?

Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound

Midge Costin

Sound is the first thing we perceive before being born, which shapes the image of the world around us. It is also an essential part of cinematography, which allows us to tell colourful stories. People tend to forget about the sound in film compared to the visuals. However, it is no less (if not more) important part of the film experience. Making Waves is a historical overview of technological and artistic processes of sound design in canonical works, especially of Hollywood cinema, and an opportunity to learn more about film sound from the perspective of filmmakers including David Lynch, Sofia Coppola, and George Lucas.

Manufacturing Happiness

Jean-Christophe Ribot

Books, apps, coaching sessions: Today, happiness is everywhere. We might think that there is nothing wrong with this common-sense concern. But it's actually the opposite of social reality. So what lies behind this contemporary obsession with happiness and the billions of euros generated by its industry?

Mistři starých řemesel: Hlína (Masters of Old Crafts: Clay)

Tomáš Kratochvíl

The Celts were skilled imitators of foreign technologies. They adopted useful ideas from the ancient world, which they then put into practice at home. To produce their aesthetically and functionally perfect ceramics, they needed several innovations, which subsequently caused a transformation of the organization of their society.

Mistři starých řemesel: Zlato a stříbro (Masters of Old Crafts: Gold and Silver)

Tomáš Kratochvíl

Great Moravia was a slave state. The hunting of young people in pagan territories and their sale to the Islamic world ensured a supply of precious metals for the ruling clans.

Mistři starých řemesel: Textil (Masters of Old Crafts: Textile)

Tomáš Kratochvíl

Clothing, so taken for granted today, once depended solely on women's domestic labor. The complicated and lengthy process of fabric production, reminiscent of computer programming, was once highly valued and associated with the essence of womanhood.

Microbiome

Stavros Petropoulos

The limits of intrusion in the peaceful lives of local folk on the island of Ikaria are being tested in a group of scientists' quest to find the secret for long and healthy life. Islanders go about in their daily microcosms - in the kitchen, in the garden, in the workplace and in their "hangouts", when researchers invade asking for something rather personal. A clash of energies rises between locals and perplexed scientists that leaves no stone unturned, in the attempt to understand frozen time and intriguing idiosyncrasies. A comedic study in pacing and reframing a world view.

Mise: Amazonie a my (Mission A)

Martin Smékal Jiří Šlofar

Under the auspices of two non-profit organisations, Czech researchers and activists head out to the Amazon to find ways to preserve it. On their journey, they join the locals and emphasise the connection between nature and culture. Together, they come to the conclusion that mutual help and understanding are necessary to keep both thriving. By syncing with nature, the Czech team assumes responsibility for events on the other side of the globe by attempting to prevent the deforestation of rainforests and loss of knowledge of isolated cultures.

Movements

Dahee JEONG

In the space of 10 minutes, the African baobab tree grows 0.008mm, the fastest dog in the world, the Greyhound, can
run 12km, and the Earth travels 18,000km around the Sun. "Movements" is a 10-minute animated film which I drew at
a rate of 2 seconds of animation per day. We are all walking, seeing, working, running, and stopping together.

NAYA (Der Wald hat Tausend Augen) (2021)

Sebastian Mulder

She-wolf Naya, monitored on her journey from her birthplace in Germany through the Netherlands to Belgium, becomes more and more famous and visible – until it endangers not just her wildness, but her existence.

Oeconomia

Carmen Losmann

Layer by layer, the episodic documentary OECONOMIA reveals how the rules of the contemporary capitalist game systematically precondition growth, deficits and concentrations of wealth. With particular shrewdness and rigor OECONOMIA articulates the more egregious aspects of capitalist economy rendered invisible by the prevalent media coverage.

Oppenheimer

Christopher Nolan

Oppenheimer propels audiences into the paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it. With America locked in a devastating war, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer becomes the central figure in a pulse-pounding race against the Nazis to develop the first atomic bomb.

Orlando (1992)

Sally Potter

ORLANDO is a story of the quest for love, and it is also an ironic dance through English history. Addressing contemporary concerns about gender and identity, the film is remarkably true to the spirit of Virginia Woolf, but it also skilfully adapts the original story to give it a striking, cinematic form. The screenplay is a standard text taught in film schools as a radical and successful adaptation of a classic work. ORLANDO is a bold, unsentimental re-working of Virginia Woolf's classic novel in which an innocent aristocrat journeys through 400 years of English history first as a man, then as a woman.

Unser Täglich Brot (Notre Pain Quotidien) (Our Daily Bread)

Nikolaus Geyrhalter

OUR DAILY BREAD is a wide-screen tableau of a feast which isn't always easy to digest - and in which we all take part. A pure, meticulous and high-end film experience that enables the audience to form their own ideas.

Particle Fever

Mark Levinson

Imagine being able to watch as Edison turned on the first light bulb, or as Franklin received his first jolt of electricity. For the first time, a film gives audiences a front row seat to a significant and inspiring scientific breakthrough as it happens. Particle Fever follows six brilliant scientists during the launch of the Large Hadron Collider, marking the start-up of the biggest and most expensive experiment in the history of the planet, pushing the edge of human innovation. As they seek to unravel the mysteries of the universe, 10,000 scientists from over 100 countries joined forces in pursuit of a single goal - to recreate conditions that existed just moments after the Big Bang and find the Higgs boson, potentially explaining the origin of all matter. But our heroes confront an even bigger challenge - have we reached our limit in understanding why we exist? Directed by Mark Levinson, a physicist turned filmmaker, from the inspiration and initiative of producer David Kaplan and masterfully edited by Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, The Godfather trilogy), Particle Fever is a celebration of discovery, revealing the very human stories behind this epic machine.

Path of the Panther

Eric Bendick

Using trap-motion cameras, wildlife photographer Carlton Ward charts the habitat of the elusive – and vanishing – Florida panther. Filmmaker Eric Bendick follows Ward and cohorts as they pursue the perfect photograph that they believe will change the tide of public indifference to government-sanctioned destruction of the Everglades' delicately balanced ecosystem and the panther's imminent extinction. Image-making has rarely felt this essential to our planet's survival.

Permafrost refreeze: The Reindeer factor

Kaisu Koski

Permafrost thaw plays a significant role in climate change, as global warming leads to massive amounts of organic carbon being released from the permafrost into the atmosphere. This short film, following a structure of a scientific paper, explores the so-called Zimov hypothesis, which involves non-human animals in mitigating permafrost thaw. According to the Zimov hypothesis, large herbivores such as reindeer and horse could prevent permafrost thaw as they compact the snow while grazing, keeping the ground temperature colder. Putting this hypothesis to test, the film introduces a speculative snow compacting experiment that utilizes the human body as a simulation for the reindeer body to measure the impact of snow stomping on the underlying ground temperature. Next to the impact of stomping, the preliminary results highlight the effect of rain on compacted snow. This art-science project has been conducted at the Ars BioArctica Residency at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station of the University of Helsinki, in subarctic Finland.

Polyfonatura (2019)

Jon Vatne

Can one make music with nature as the instruments? The eccentric sound artist Eirik Havnes is preparing his most ambitious project ever: A symphonic masterpiece with the nature as his orchestra.

Prales zítřka (Rainforest of Tomorrow)

Michal Gálik

A group of Czech zoologists travels to the Congolese rainforest to help protect a biologically important area. At the same time, they learn about the workings of animal hunting and poaching.

safe, nature (2022)

Radek Ševčík

Today, when many people no longer consider themselves as a part of nature, modern educational building was built in the middle of the Wallachian landscape. Plastic planet Earth, virtual animals, big screens showing forests and meadows. How will this affect the children?

Searching for Planet 9

Florence Tran

In the depths of our solar system, a giant planet would be hidden. This planet would be five times more massive than the Earth and so far from the Sun that it would take 10,000 years to orbit the star. Teams of astronomers have been tirelessly tracking this mysterious planet for several years. What clues and discoveries allow them to hypothesise its existence ? Why is it so difficult to detect ?
This celestial object is nicknamed Planet 9 because, since Pluto's demotion to a dwarf planet in 2006 it's no longer the ninth planet in the system.
This film-investigation reveals how this fascinating research carries even more issues: by exploring these largely unknown territories, thousands of objects are revealed, forcing us to reconsider the richness of our solar system. And to deeply modify the vision we have of it and of the story of its formation.

Seaweed (2022)

Julia Parks

An art film depicting the folklore, ecology, and history of the brown algae industry in northern Scotland. We hear from brown algae pickers, factory workers, and environmental activists and experience archive footage and folk songs.

Secrets in the Scat

Ruth Berry

Scott Burnett is "Scatman"- an Australian ecologist on the trail of the secrets of poop. By identifying and analyzing animal scat for DNA and hormones, he discovers essential details of their behavior and how to protect them.

Sisters with Transistors

Lisa Rovner

SISTERS WITH TRANSISTORS is the remarkable untold story of electronic music's female pioneers, composers who embraced machines and their liberating technologies to utterly transform how we produce and listen to music today.

Smile and Wave (2022)

Eva Charlotte Nilsen

Do you want to go for a walk on the shore? SMILE and WAVE is a film essay about a spring landscape in Vesterålen. Floodwaters and memories are mixed together in the story of life's vulnerability and what is left when something is gone.

SOA (2020)

Raquel Castro

We are surrounded by all kinds of sounds, but how far are we conscious about them? The director and investigator Raquel Castro has been working with the concept of sound landscape. And in particular the way sounds, silences, noises, frequencies and all spectral densities - infra or ultrasounds - can shape each place and all of us. This is also a film essay about citizenship, ecology, and the responsibility we have for the sounds we produce.

Solutions (2021)

Pernille Rose Grønkjær

Throughout the ages, each time a new technology has appeared, it has transformed our lives and society — today more than ever. Lead by digitalization, followed by new living and intelligent technologies, our world is being transformed in a way that's difficult for us to comprehend. A group of the world's leading scientists isolate themselves for 10 days at the renowned Santa Fe Institute, hidden away in the desert of New Mexico. They come from all corners of science representing environment, economy, democracy, social media, education, status of institutions and artificial technology. Together, they want to start a revolutionary movement with an ambitious goal: To secure the future of humanity through science by finding the path to a new paradigm.

Sonnenstube (2022)

Davide Palella

Sergio Cortesi dedicated his life to solar observation. At the "Specola Solare" in Locarno, between 1957 and 2021, he made over 15.000 sunspots drawings, driven by the faith of a monk to whom his own god never gave an answer.

Sound Fields: Adventures in Contemporary Field Recording

Sam Campbell

Sound Fields: Adventures in Contemporary Field Recording is a 32-minute documentary directed by Sam Campbell and produced by The Vinyl Factory in 2018. The film explores the creative process and artistic applications of field recording, highlighting how artists use environmental sounds to craft music. It features contributions from musicians and sound artists such as Nabihah Iqbal, Equiknoxx, Lawrence English, Lonelady, David Chatton Barker, Félicia Atkinson, Jonáš Gruska, and Cheryl Tipp from the British Library. The documentary delves into the motivations behind field recording and the ways it informs various musical genres, from ambient and experimental to electronic music. It captures the interplay between sound, space, and memory, illustrating how physical environments shape artistic expression.

Spectrum Restoration (2022)

Felippe Mussel

More than 30% of Brazil's Pantanal biome was affected by fires between the years 2018 and 2021 due to unscrupulous agribusiness. Felippe Mussel's experimental film consists of a sound spectrogram of these fires, from which a fragment of the Ecuadorian constitution gradually emerges, granting nature the same rights as humans. "Nature has a right to renewal."

Sans Soleil

Chris Marker

This experimental film by acclaimed French director Chris Marker collects footage recorded in various countries around the world and presents it in collage-like form. The movie features no synchronized sound, but instead ties the various segments together with music and voice-over narration, which ponders the topics such as memory, technology and society. As the scenes shift, locations range from Japan to Iceland to Africa, creating a truly international work.

The Arc of Oblivion

Ian Cheney

"The Arc of Oblivion" explores a quirk of humankind: in a universe that erases its tracks, we humans are hellbent on leaving a trace. Set against the backdrop of the filmmaker's quixotic quest to build an ark in a field in Maine, the film heads far afield - to salt mines in the Alps, fjords in the Arctic, and ancient libraries in the Sahara - to illuminate the strange world of archives, record-keeping, and memory.

Podmanivá koróna (The Breathtaking Corona)

Jonáš Jirovský

A total solar eclipse. It occurs when the Moon covers the entire Sun from our perspective. And thus we can see the corona, the outline that opens up countless secrets related to the Sun and other phenomena in the universe. Thanks to the corona, we have discovered new elements or learned more about solar flares. Why is the corona so fascinating for scientists and travelers and why is a total solar eclipse such an incredible experience? Experts and experienced travelers will tell you about it. Come discover the beauty of eclipses and the solar corona.

The Chronicle of Orgasm (Kronika orgasmu)

Kateřina Kořínková

Sexual liberation in the second half of the 20th century. The history of intimate life in Czechoslovakia in a more honest version that has not yet made it into history textbooks.

The Empty Sphere (Le Cercle vide)

Stéphanie Roland

Nothing really survives here. The bottom is so deep that no light ever reaches it. Very few boats go through. It is unknown when the falls will take place. This experimental documentary portrays a space object and its fall into the darkness of a space cemetery. A woman scientist reveals her attachment to this object and the absence of images documenting this mysterious place. As a reverse sci-fi journey, this essay mixes real and fictional archives to guide us, like a stalker, to the outskirts of an invisible place.

The Gene: An Intimate History

Jack Youngelson

"It is in my genes!" we say, but do we know where the roots of genetics and DNA lie? The Gene: An Intimate History travels back in time and shows the beginnings of human genetics, from observation of peas to deciphering DNA, and introduces pioneers determined to discover the future. It is interwoven with a hopeful story of a family and their young daughter with a rare genetic disease, and doctors searching for a cure. Without the scientists and discoveries of the past, this would not have been possible.

Siunissaq Det Sidste Menneske (The Last Human)

Ivalo Frank

Life on Earth begins and ends with Greenland. Researcher Minik Rosing's landmark discovery of the first life contrasts with the melting ice masses in Ivalo Frank's tribute to her beautiful homeland.
Our most basic understanding of the origins of life was recently turned upside down when Greenlandic scientist Minik Rosing discovered the first traces of life on Earth in a small fjord near Isua. His discovery predated all previous traces of life by over 300 million years. Life began in Greenland. But at the same time, its melting ice masses are accelerating day by day, and scientists around the world agree that it could drown our entire civilisation if it is allowed to continue. The end of life will also start from Greenland. Director Ivalo Frank's new film is a tribute to her vast, scenic country, caught between two extremes: the beginning and the end of life on Earth as we know it. Between the dizzying concept of deep time and the acceleration of modernity, Frank's film anchors itself in its own moment through the encounter with a group of children from the village of Kangaatsiaq who fall in love, form friendships and struggle with loss and longing.

The North Drift

Steffen Krones

A German beer bottle, washed ashore on one of Norway's remotest islands on the Lofoten archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. How did it get here? Did it really come from Germany? Or did a thirsty tourist down the beer and dispose of the bottle in the sea? Passionate about Norway's unique scenery, film-maker Steffen Krones is keen to get to the bottom of the matter. Are rivers in Central Europe connected to the Arctic Sea? Can waste really travel so far? His personal curiosity turns into a scientific research project. Together with engineers and well-known scientists, Steffen wants to trace the journey of plastic waste from his home city of Dresden. They build GPS buoys which they launch on the river Elbe. Steffen's friend Kris follows the experiment from Norway. Will the buoys really wash ashore somewhere in the Arctic? Will GPS data confirm suspicions that there are links between German rivers and the Arctic Circle? The film takes us on a scientific adventure down the river Elbe across the North Sea to Norway and shows us that we are part of a cycle in which every one of us has the power to make changes.

The Orgasm Chronicle – Why Do Women Have Orgasm?

Kateřina Kořínková Sobotková

Politics, history, and the female orgasm. What do these have in common? The first in the series of eight episodes of the popular science documentary about the most intimate parts of people's lives against the backdrop of 1950s socialist Czechoslovakia. Authentic testimonies comment on the neglected and altogether ignored chapters of biology and history textbooks. The Orgasm Chronicle documentary is based on the book Sexual Liberation, Socialist Style by Kateřina Lišková, who is also active in the stand-up comedy duo Duo docentky. Numerous archive materials and animations related to sex life accompany the documentary series.

The Sound is Innocent

Johana Ožvold

When does sound become music? THE SOUND IS INNOCENT invites you on an audiovisual journey into a dreamlike space that explores the meaning, function and significance of the world of electronic and experimental sound. Across five distinct chapters, the film guides us through an oscillating maze of creative figures and moments that's as bracingly original as the pioneering music it so passionately documents.
Ožvold's dynamic and unusual documentary shines new light on some of the fundamental questions of musical creation, tracing the relationship between both man and machine, and artist and instrument. Featuring seminal voices working in the fields of experimental and electronic music including François Bonnet (aka Kassel Jaeger), Steve Goodman (aka Kode9), Julian Rohrhuber, John Richards, Hannes Hoelzl & Alberto De Campo, each artist provides a unique and sometimes personal perspective on the radical periods of sonic invention that have transformed art, culture and even public life.
In her debut feature-length film, Johana Ožvold navigates a mysterious labyrinthian institution, encountering manifest memories and inspirations. From the subversive frequencies tuned behind the iron curtain, to the confrontational French avant-garde, and the limitless sculptures of digital innovation, THE SOUND IS INNOCENT explores fertile and prescient links between sound and society, as well as the technology boom and our globalized world.

The Visitors

Veronika Lišková

A young anthropologist, Zdenka, moves with her husband and three sons to Svalbard, Norway, to study how life is changing in polar regions. She has received a prestigious two-year grant to carry out extensive research on the impact of globalizationglobalization on the inhabitants of the world's northernmost town, Longyearbyen. After falling in love with her new home, Zdenka discovers that more than icebergs and permafrost are vanishing in the Arctic. Through conducting interviews with residents, she begins to perceive how heterogeneous the small local community actually is, while also revealing tensions that lie beneath the surface. Zdenka then has to work out the extent to which she can get involved in the local community that she only originally intended to observe.

Theater of Thought

Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog sets his sights on yet another mysterious landscape — the human brain — for clues as to why a hunk of tissue can produce profound thoughts and feelings while considering the philosophical, ethical, and social implications of fast-advancing neural technology.
Werner Herzog turned 80 this year. He's travelled on every continent including Antarctica. In recent films, he's reached back in time to study ancient paintings, stared down into volcanoes, and cast our eyes heavenwards to contemplate meteorites. Now he ventures into the inner landscape of our brains.
He teams with scientist Rafael Yuste who, in Herzog's words, "is at the forefront of research that will change the world as much as the understanding of DNA has changed it." They go on a road trip to meet an array of people whose cutting-edge research sounds like the stuff of science fiction. There's the tech billionaire funding brain scanners. The scientist inspired by psychedelic trips to build a brain-to-computer interface. And the human rights lawyer who warns that the international community is totally unprepared for the rapid advances in neural technology.
Herzog delights in dialogues that probe into philosophy, ethics, and the offbeat. He ponders questions such as: How do all our senses of motion, love, hate, pleasure, pain, and more emerge from the tissue inside our skull? How does music affect human existence? Do fish have souls? How does a tightrope walker conquer fear? How stupid is Siri? Are we living in some sort of theatre of thought, an imaginary world that only exists in our brain?
The film is multifaceted, illuminating the technological advances that are helping people overcome brain-related illness, confronting conspiracy theories over implanted chips, and questioning the politics of mind control.
Most of us will never set foot on the forbidding terrain Herzog has traversed. But we all have a brain. This film deepens our understanding of what's happening inside it.
Thom Powers, TIFF

Thousand and One Sounds

Pilar Arcila

The various confinements have upset our daily lives. The deserted streets have given way to an ambient silence, unusual in our contemporary urban societies, revealing the omnipresence of sounds in our lives. Sound perception is precisely what researchers are studying that a group of high school students will encounter.

To Beat and Not To Beat (2014)

Tomáš Škrdlant

What arguments are voiced when we ask if corporal punishment should have a place in child-rearing in Czechia? What effect and influence on relationships does it have? And why do some swear by it while others want it gone? The film by Czech Television uses statements by children, parents, educators, and adults reflecting on their own childhood to offer a complex look at the use of corporal punishment as a tool of upbringing. The insight into its history is accompanied by illustrations and poems by Jiří Žáček.

Vinyl (2022)

Pavel Jirásek

A documentary film about the history of gramophone records in the Czech lands from the period of the First Republic to the present day.

We the Power (2020)

David Garrett Byars

The energy crisis, war, and changing climate all push us to reimagine how we think about energy. The film and following debate explore the future of the sector. Imagine a new local and sustainable energy system that is built on bringing social and economic benefits to neighbouring communities. The movie follows neighbourhoods of Girona, the urban roofs of London, and Bavaria as they build a more resilient and healthy future of the energy sector.

Whale Nation (2023)

Jean-Albert Lievre

Imagine upending the traditional energy system and giving the power of clean electricity production back to your neighbors. We the Power follows friends, families and visionaries as they break down legislative barriers and take power back from big energy companies to put in the hands of locals. The film chronicles local cooperatives from deep in Germany's Black Forest to the streets of ancient Girona in Spain and the urban rooftops of London, England, as they pave the way for a renewable-energy revolution and build healthier, more financially stable communities.

What Lies Inside (2020)

Luke A. Renner

In the aftermath of Haiti's devastating 2010 earthquake, grappling with PTSD, filmmaker Luke A. Renner set out on a healing journey that would eventually unlock an older, deeper, childhood trauma he had lost in time. In his pursuit of personal healing, Luke would eventually uncover the insidious reality of psychological trauma and a public health crisis that's been quietly wreaking havoc on humanity. In the documentary "What Lies Inside", Luke sets out to expose an unspoken truth that he discovered, a truth about the darkness that binds us to our suffering. With the help of world-renowned experts, fellow survivors, and creators from around the globe, this film seeks to illuminate what lies inside us all, a truth that, when faced, may finally set us free.

Wild Prague

Jan Hošek

Prague is one of the greatest tourist attractions the world has to offer. Whether it be the medieval atmosphere, or the Kafkaesque spirit, millions of people are drawn to it. But the Mother of all Cities also has a particular hidden aspect – hundreds of rare species you'd hardly expect to see here live within sight of the Old Town Square's Astronomical Clock and Charles Bridge.

Wrought

Anna Sigrithur Joel Penner

A stunning visual exploration of matter in various states of microbial transformation begs fundamental questions about our complicated relationships with other species.
Wrought begins with that universal moment of disappointment: despite all best efforts, our food has gone bad. But instead of turning away in disgust, Wrought zooms in, approaching the usually hidden world of decay with curiosity and stunning time lapse photography. Spoiling dinner leftovers bloom with successions of geometric bacterial colonies. Yeasts churn and froth in the torrential flood of juice leaking from a decaying melon. Cheese is slowly engulfed by carpets of furry, green mould. But, the film asks, would rot by any other name still reek?
In answering this question, Wrought unfolds a larger story about the ways we humans construct categories for the world around us that can be limiting. It explores (and challenges) terms like spoil, ferment, compost and rot as it coaxes audiences to decompose these categories and their associated binaries: self and other, human and non-human, and nature and culture. As the film title implies, we are all forged out of the relationships that transgress such binaries; we are all, indeed, wrought.

Your Hundred Year Life

Bill Jones Ben Timlett

Hurray, we are living longer. The bad news is pension systems are busting worldwide. With extensive old age poverty as a result. In The Netherlands the system is still solid, though inflation is hitting many pensioners here as well. Your 100-year life shows how even the richest countries have been brought to this point. Yet, there are genuine grounds for hope. It's not too late yet. Providing we rethink the concept of retirement in general, and of old age, the quality of life as a pensioner and financing it in particular. It will make your hundredth anniversary something to celebrate.

Zuckerberg, You Owe/Own Me

Pauline Blanchet

A deep exploration into a personal Facebook archive of videos leads to a discovery of the internet's darker historical roots. In an attempt to build a connection between one's own data and the digital infrastructure, this film questions how one can perceive the internet as separate from their material world, and hence, themselves.