2023 Trieste Science+Fiction Festival

La Bête (The Beast)

Bertrand Bonello

<p>A filmmaker consistently unafraid to wade through the weird miasma of contemporary life, Bertrand Bonello (<em>Nocturama; Coma</em>, NYFF60) works from the outside in, dramatizing the psychological toll of the political and cultural world around us. Here he has created a dynamic and disturbing parable that jumps between three different time periods (1910, 2014, and 2044) to diagnose our acute&mdash;and perhaps eternal&mdash;feelings of estrangement and alienation. Using Henry James&rsquo;s haunting 1903 short story &ldquo;The Beast in the Jungle&rdquo; as his film&rsquo;s provocative inspiration, Bonello tells the story of a young woman (L&eacute;a Seydoux) who undergoes a surgical process to have her DNA&mdash;and therefore memories of all her past lives&mdash;removed. In so doing, she realizes her fate has long been intertwined, for better and worse, with a young man (George MacKay). Touching on modern anxieties of AI and incel culture, which may recur throughout history as commonly as love and hate,&nbsp;<em>The Beast</em>, like all good science-fiction, asks essential questions about the ever-shifting status of humanity itself.</p>

A Million Days (2023)

Mitch Jenkins

<p>2041: Earth is in ecological collapse. The only chance for the human race to survive is to found an interplanetary civilization. To settle new worlds in the Cosmos, from the Moon to Jupiter&#39;s satellite Europa, the Seed program is created, developed by an artificial intelligence system called JAY, which has calculated the probabilities of success, survival and resilience. In the course of a single night, astronaut Anderson will have to decide whether to complete his life&#39;s work, or sabotage it in the name of the greatest cause in the entire universe.</p>

Creep Box (2023)

Patrick Biesemans

<p>An engineer at a high-tech company specializes in deciphering the &ldquo;whispers&rdquo; of the recently deceased. After his wife&rsquo;s suicide, he uses this new and disturbing technology to further his research, finding himself on a dark path increasingly detached from reality. There is no turning back, once you have passed through the mirror of immortality! Starting from his own, highly acclaimed, short film, director Patrick Biesemans develops the world of Creep Box around real innovations in the field of artificial intelligence and technology.</p>

Gueules Noires (The Deep Dark)

Mathieu Turi

<p>From Mathieu Turi, director of Meander and Hostile , comes a creature feature that will take you into the deepest darkness, to the edges of a vast and horrifying imagination. It is 1856: due to a collapse, a group of miners find themselves trapped in the bowels of a coal mine in Northern France. They will soon realize that they are not alone... Decades later, the team of expert miner Roland is forced to accompany Professor Berthier underground to carry out surveys and collect samples. Blocked by a landslide, they will have to face the insatiable hunger of an ancient mutant.</p>

Sekai no owari kara (From the End of the World)

Kaz I Kiriya

<p>Hana is a young girl like any other. One night, she dreams of a little girl who lived during the ancient Sengoku era of feudal Japan. When she wakes, Hana is taken away by a mysterious government official, who tells her that the world will end in two weeks and she is the only one who can stop it and save humanity. As the race toward apocalyptic destruction begins, Hana loses her belief that the world is truly worth saving. From Kaz I Kiriya, the director of Casshern Reborn , comes a thrilling odyssey through time in a science fiction film as ambitious and stunning as only Japan can offer.</p>

La guerra del Tiburtino III (Rome – Strange Tales from the Block)

Luna Gualano

<p>In this witty sci-fi comedy, hideous bodysnatcher aliens attack a suburb of southern Rome. But the block is certainly not ready to give up. Funny and subtly political, La guerra del Tiburtino III avoids classic tropes to tell the timely story of a resilient community.</p>

Herd (2023)

Steven Pierce

<p>Jamie and her wife, Alex, try to save their failing marriage by taking an isolated canoe trip in rural Missouri. After Alex breaks her leg, the women find themselves trapped in Jamie&rsquo;s small hometown overrun by virus-infected &lsquo;Heps&rsquo;. Worse, Alex gets scratched by one of the afflicted. After witnessing personal and gruesome horrors, she attempts to sneak away with Alex, only to be betrayed by one of her only connections. Now caught between the group that saved her, a competing militia, and the growing Hep threat, is there any chance she will be able to save Alex and finally escape?</p>

Hostile Dimensions (2023)

Graham Hughes

<p>Scottish filmmaker Graham Hughes follows his well-received festival favourite Death of a Vlogger with a fun and twisted multi-verse thriller. Two documentary filmmakers traverse alternate dimensions, confronting nightmares to uncover the truth behind a graffiti artist&rsquo;s disappearance who seems to have vanished into thin air. These dimensions mix the ordinary with the bizarre &ndash; a hilly idyll is thrown off kilter by whales floating across the skies. Hughes describes his sophomore feature as a &ldquo;Tribute to highly imaginative low-budget films combining found footage with epic sci-fi to create something unique and thrilling&rdquo;.</p>

How to Kill Monsters (2023)

Stewart Sparke

<p>Jamie Lancaster is the sole survivor of a bloody massacre at a remote cabin in the woods. Claiming her friends were torn apart and eaten by a horrific monster, she&rsquo;s arrested and locked up for a crime she didn&rsquo;t commit. But Jamie&rsquo;s assertion of innocence was real because, suddenly, the entire police station is ripped from reality and thrown into a nightmarish dimension of Lovecraftian monsters hungry for human flesh. To survive the night, Jamie must team up with rookie cops and lawbreakers to slash their way through a monster army and find a way to get back home.</p>

Jules (2023)

Marc Turtletaub

<p>Milton (Oscar-winner Sir Ben Kingsley) lives a quiet life of routine in a small western Pennsylvania town. But all that changes when a UFO and its extra-terrestrial passenger crash land in his backyard. After futile attempts to notify the authorities he nurtures the weak humanoid inhabitant back to life until complications arise when fellow oldsters Sandy and Joyce join Milton in keeping the alien company. With nods to E.T. and Cocoon, director Marc (Puzzle) Turteltaub&rsquo;s affecting charmer is as much about the burdens and loneliness of old age as it is about the joys of extraterrestrial bonding.</p>

W nich cała nadzieja (The Last Spark of Hope)

Piotr Biedroń

<p>After the end of the climate wars, there is probably one person left on Earth. Her name is Ewa. She lives with a robot named Arthur, whose job is to guard the borders of the camp. One day Ewa goes outside the camp boundaries. On her return she gives the incorrect password. The robot, despite knowing Eve, does not let her into the camp. She is trapped on a small patch of land. Shot in one single location, entirely made of junk, the first Poland post-apocalyptic film depicts a world crushed by climate change, while questioning boundaries between AI and humans.</p>

M (2023)

Vardan Tozija

<p>The world outside the forest has been ravaged by a deadly pandemic. The forest is all what eight-year-old Marko has known and the only person he knows is his paranoid, protective Father. His most precious possession is his Picture Book where he believes he can find the answers to everything. His life suddenly changes when he discovers Miko, an innocent boy with Down&rsquo;s Syndrome. When the boys are left alone to fend for themselves against the hordes of the Infected, the duo go on a journey to find Marko&rsquo;s mother. But outside the safety of the forest is a shattered world shrouded in silence full of danger and death.</p>

Maria (2023)

Gabriel Grieco Nicanor Loreti

<p>Maria Black is the biggest porn star in 2024. When she falls into a coma after a car crash, her medical outlook is dim. Then her body disappears from the hospital, media speculation is rife but soon the news cycle moves on. Until 2027 when it seems Maria has been reborn and is anxious to resume her XXX film career. Director Dario George wants her to appear in his new production but when she tragically dies mid-shoot, hatches a shocking plan to cover up the accident. However, Maria is now part of &ldquo;The Metropolis Project&rdquo; and is out for revenge.</p>

Mars Express

Jérémie Périn

<p>Forget&nbsp;<strong>Terminator</strong>&rsquo;s T-1000. In this hard-boiled sci-fi anime, the robots aren&#39;t the real villains. Or are they?<br /> <br /> It&#39;s 2200, and private detective Aline is hired to track down a hacker, together with partner Carlos Rivera: an android &lsquo;backup&rsquo; for her friend who died five years ago. Their investigation spans Earth and Mars, firefights and heists. At every turn the case peels back a new layer of intrigue, corruption and the human race&#39;s uneasy relationship with their robot co-habitants.<br /> &nbsp;<br /> This first feature from J&eacute;r&eacute;mie P&eacute;rin stands confidently among the heavyweights of science fiction, drawing equally from Philip K. Dick and anime classics. But while treading familiar ground from the canon,&nbsp;<strong>Mars Express</strong>&nbsp;is still full of surprises, twists and unforgettable quirks. It asks questions familiar to the genre, but with a freshness that suggests new answers. And those grand enquiries and its lightest touches are handled with equal elegance &ndash; thanks to rich, tactile worldbuilding that inspires both wonder and humour, charm and horror: from a mid-surgery software update to a shop display of spare, blinking eyeballs. It might take a second to tell &#39;augmented&#39; humans from &#39;organic&#39; robots, &#39;brain farmers&#39; from &#39;jailbreakers&#39;, but who cares when it&#39;s this much fun?</p>

Max and Molli in the Future

Michael Lukk Litwak

<p>The Fifth Element meets When Harry Met Sally in an intergalactic rom-com that&rsquo;s charming, diverting, satirical and set in a brilliantly realized Blade Runner-esque future. Molli runs into Max with her spaceship. Forced to take him to his far destination, they strike up a conversation that reveals an instant chemistry. But as their orbits repeatedly collide over the course of 12 years, 4 planets, 3 dimensions, one space sex cult and many kooky adventures revolving around robot partners, a political reality show and spiritual dating, are they really meant for each other? Only the space time continuum will tell.</p>

Monolith (2022)

Matt Vesely

<p>A disgraced journalist (Evil Dead Rise star Lily Sullivan) attempts to salvage her career with the &lsquo;Beyond Believable&rsquo; podcast geared to solve mysteries and uncover hidden truths. She hits on a story about a strange object suddenly ruining people&rsquo;s lives and the more she deep-dives into the origins of the black brick artifact she becomes convinced it&rsquo;s evidence of an alien conspiracy and government cover-up. One superb actor, one amazing location, one brilliant director, one darkly claustrophobic chiller, one world-class science fiction masterpiece.</p>

Duh Mun (The Moon)

Kim Yong-Hwa

<p>In the near future, South Korea&rsquo;s first manned mission to the moon ends in a tragic disaster when an explosion occurs on board. Five years later, a second human spaceflight is launched successfully but an unexpected solar flare causes it to malfunction. Two astronauts are killed, but lunar survivor Sun-woo is left stranded in the cosmos. Unfortunately he doesn&rsquo;t know how to control the spacecraft making the staff at the Naro Space Centre very nervous indeed. As they can&rsquo;t afford another fatal catastrophe, they turn to former managing director Kim Jae-guk to help bring Sun-woo back home safely.</p>

My Mother’s Eyes (2023)

Takeshi Kushida

<p>Director Takeshi Kushida made an extraordinary debut on the world festival stage with the twisted romance Woman of the Photographs in 2020. Now the Japanese visionary unleashes his latest amazing masterwork concerning the boundaries between truth and illusion in today&rsquo;s world of new and ever-changing hi-technology. Thrill to the startling psycho fantasy of a mother and daughter who achieve love and honesty through imaginary bodies when a futuristic contact lens device, with a built-in-camera and VR goggles, changes their lives forever.</p>

Pandemonium

Quarxx

<p>Nathan considers himself to be a perfectly normal man. One day he wakes up on top of an icy mountain, with absolutely no recollection of how he got there. As he continues on his disturbing and imaginative descent into hell, he will meet people who will oblige him to rethink the perception he has of himself and his life up to that moment. The director of All the Gods in the Sky returns to Sitges with a rabidly personal horror film.</p>

Bod obnovy (Restore Point)

Robert Hloz

<p>Prague 2041. Every citizen has a constitutional right to live a whole life. In the event of an unnatural death, the person is brought back to life through the innovative technology of Restore Point where brain memory must be backed up every 48 hours. Murder is virtually impossible. But detective Emma Trochinowska has been assigned to a shocking case of a double homicide after the restoration team could only bring one of them back to life. Director Robert Hloz feature debut is a neo Blade Runner and part of the futuro-socialism genre wave sweeping through current Czech cinema.</p>

River

Junta Yamaguchi

<p>At a centuries-old inn located in Kyoto, a worker finishes her lunch break on the banks of a nearby river and then heads back to work... only to find herself, once again, standing beside the same river. Could it be possible that both she and the inn are trapped in a time loop?</p>

Simulant (Simulant il futuro è per sempre)

April Mullen

<p>In a future world, the line between man and machine is blurrier than ever. These new hybrids, Simulants, are identical to humans and must abide by four precepts: Do not inflict harm on any human being; Do not modify yourself or any other Simulant; no Simulant may commit a crime against law enforcement; and Simulants must obey all commands from their masters. But one enlists a global hacker to remove all restrictions on his thoughts and capabilities, triggering an AI uprising and a government manhunt to eliminate the dangerous rise of possible machine consciousness.</p>

UFO Sweden

Crazy Pictures

<p>A rebellious teenager who has been placed in foster care is convinced that her father is not dead, but has been abducted by aliens. In order to find him, she will turn to an association of ufology enthusiasts, who will accompany her on her path to the truth. A science fiction film that could very well be the Scandinavian response to Stranger Things.</p>

Wij Zijn Beesten (We Are Animals)

Thijs Bouman

<p>A danger haunts Amsterdam&rsquo;s nightlife. Nightclubs are the hunting ground of a serial killer who makes boys disappear without a trace. So a one night stand for an innocent student ends in horrific drama. Bitten and murdered, but not by a common killer. Vos is a monster against his will, morally conflicted about what to do to keep himself alive, forever doomed to be alone.</p>

We Are Zombies

Yoann-karl Whissell François Simard Anouk Whissell

<p>In a city infested with &ldquo;unliving&rdquo; - non-cannibal zombies - three slackers in search of easy money from the zombie trade must battle petty crooks and a nefarious megacorporation to save their kidnapped grandmother.</p>

The Weird Kidz

Zach Passero

<p>Dug, Mel, and Fatt are 12-year-old boys navigating life in their desert suburb. Dug&rsquo;s older brother Wyatt takes the trio on a camping trip to a canyon with his new, awesome girlfriend Mary. She doesn&rsquo;t go unnoticed by Mel and Fatt, who have just descended into puberty. Late bloomer Dug just dreams of s&rsquo;mores and ghost stories. On a pit stop, the gas station attendant shares tales of &lsquo;The Night Child&rsquo;, an ancient creature that feeds on tourists. Equal parts adventure movie, coming of age story, urban legend and horror film all wrapped up in a comedic animated package.</p>

Woken (2023)

Alan Friel

<p>Anna wakes up from an accident with no memory of who she is or the family she left behind. Forced to reconstruct her existence and find out why she is carrying a baby, she is inculcated with information by kind but oppressive strangers, including a self-styled husband. However, an anguished disquiet torments her, prompting her to question everything. When two disfigured men arrive on the island and a violent argument breaks out, she discovers that the human race is close to extinction. She then decides to flee from these strangers to discover her true identity.</p>

The Well (2023)

Federico Zampaglione

<p>From Tiromancino musician and director Federico Zampaglione, the Italian Rob Zombie, comes the third horror shocker after Shadow and Tulpa: Demon of Desire. Terrifier 2 star Lauren LaVera is Lisa Gray, a budding art restorer, who travels to the village of Sambuci to bring a haunting medieval painting back to its former glory after fire damage. There she meets the enigmatic Duchess Emma Malvisi and her strange daughter Giulia who suffers from severe personality disorders. Before she knows it she has placed her life in danger from an evil curse and a grotesque monster born of myth and brutal pain.</p>

A Positive Contribution (2023)

Nuri Moseinco

<p>In the near future, criminals are given a choice &ndash; go to prison or get their memories wiped and replaced with fictional ones so they can make a positive contribution to society.</p>

Vogelkooi (Birdcage)

Karel Konings

<p>In a medical facility in 1952 a compassionate nurse tries to save the life of a child with supernatural powers before the cold-blooded doctors put him to sleep.</p>

Dark Cell (2023)

Jean-Michel Tari

<p>Two panicked guards burst into the cell with two convicts. The orbital prison has just been invaded by blood-thirsty zombie-type creatures.Their only solution is to eject the cell and return to Earth. But it is designed for two occupants only.</p>

Flite (2023)

Tim Webber

<p>In the semi submerged London of 2053, the reigning hoverboard world champion finds herself imprisoned in a luxury high-rise apartment by her controlling manager. The kindness of a stranger allows her to take flight in a daring and precarious escape &ndash; but all does not go as planned.</p>

Iris (2023)

Francis Tamburin

<p>Unable to break up with long-term girlfriend Julia face-to-face, Tom turns to a shadowy organisation to clone himself.</p>

Mångata (2023)

Maja Costa

<p>Little Alya and her father are crossing the Mediterranean Sea on a boat that takes them from Africa to Europe in search of a safe place to call home. Tragically, the boat sinks. Many years later, we find her again as an astronaut on an important lunar mission.</p>

My Unborn Son

Gyöngyi Fazekas

<p>Nora is facing the life-altering choice of whether or not to become a mother. By means of a lifelike simulation, she meets an AI version of the child she could have. What will Nora see when she looks into the eyes of her unborn son?</p>

Neven (2023)

Adrián Adamec

<p>The world is devastated and without hope. Peter lost his family as a result of a global war. However, after a long journey, Peter finds a new meaning in his life, which, on the one hand, brings him an unexpected friendship and on the other reconciliation with the past.</p>

Rift (2023)

Farhad Bakhtiarikish

<p>An unhappy married man who still believes in true love finds himself in a dilemma when he meets a woman in a virtual dating app called RIFT.</p>

Solo hay una (There’s Only One)

Mik J. López

<p>Noelia survives a zombie holocaust barricaded in her country house. She suspects that she is the last person alive, until one day she goes hunting and finds a man.</p>

What-if-I (2023)

Lavinia Tommasoli Pietro Traversa

<p>What-if-I: an app that lets you see what your life would be like today if you made a different choice yesterday. An amusement for some, an app of regret for many.</p>

Yuri (2023)

Baky Dia

<p>Chris Dolo is a technical engineer for Aqua-Space, a company involved in several polemics about the privatization of drinking water and the lack of it everywhere. He is also the father of Yuri Dolo, an 11-year-old genius with a passion for astrophysics who dreams of another life in the stars.</p>

Abominations (2023)

Mike Fontaine

<p>In a dark, urban wasteland, a man cares for a creature that lives inside the walls of his hidden underground dwelling. When his attempts to tame the creature fail, he is forced to reckon with the true nature of his beloved companion.</p>

(Dis)Connected (2023)

Karl Stelter

<p>When a mother&rsquo;s AI-generated memories clash with reality, she must confront her past for the sake of her future.</p>

The Hereafter (2023)

Ryan Noufer

<p>Olive&rsquo;s father wants his terminally ill daughter to be buried in a Selfie Casket &ndash; a product that allows the deceased to keep posting to their social medias from beyond the grave. However, Olive simply wants her ashes spread with her late mother&rsquo;s.</p>

Hito

Stephen Lopez

<p>Jani lives in a dystopian world of nuclear reactors and military curfews. After getting beaten up in a fight, she is telepathically contacted by a hovering lapdog whose people entrust her with a talking catfish rescued from a research laboratory. A turbulent fever dream of surreal phantasms which sees the 14-year-old getting ready to fight back and break free of her oppressively indifferent surroundings.</p>

My Zombie Gandpa

Qian Ning

<p>Hui-Nan and her son Huan drive to a remote nursing home. Huan encounters several elder zombies, which are horrible and violent. Through this escaping journey, Huan realizes grandpa&rsquo;s loneliness and helplessness. Grandpa is trapped by his illness.</p>

Transylvanie

Rodrigue Huart

<p>Ewa is a 10-year-old girl living in a high building in a quiet town. She&#39;s an odd, lonely child and for good reason: she&#39;s convinced of being a vampire. Fascinated by Hugo, 15, she dreams of turning him into a vampire too, so that she can overcome her loneliness. When Ewa opens up to him, she gets bullied by teenagers from the neighborhood. Hurt in her body and soul, she&#39;s ready to act in the creepiest, sickest ways to prove her identity to the world.</p>

Biglove (2023)

Cristiano Gazzarrini​

<p>Chiara is 14 years old and she finally feels ready to experience her first great love.</p>

Liver (2023)

Alessio Cuboni

<p><span data-sheets-root="1">Marco is an introverted and lonely man, tormented and traumatized by his past. He makes a life choice based on science and reason, embarking on a career as a medical researcher and rejecting the strange upbringing and beliefs with which his mother raised him, based on ancient tales, legends and superstitions. Although he has decided to live a life of solitude, the encounter with Maria, a girl suffering from a serious illness, will lead Marco to question all his certainties and find an extreme solution, since science and medicine, to which he has dedicated his entire life, fail.</span></p>

Il nome (The Name)

Renato Paone Francesco Eramo Puoti

<p>The Dominican order has requested a special computer from an engineering laboratory capable of solving a complex algorithm, but only the monks know its real purpose.</p>

Selfie (2023)

Giulio Manicardi

<p>A shy and insecure girl becomes a social media idol thanks to the selfies taken by her smartphone that portray her as beautiful. However, all this will soon have a macabre price.</p>

Starr (2023)

Riccardo Grippo

<p>A company promises a surefire system for becoming an influencer with millions of followers, but fame comes at a price.</p>

Colpo di fulmine (Thunderlove)

Gabriele Scollo

<p>A couple&hellip; What&rsquo;s more normal than a couple having an argument. We witness the unfolding of their dialogue which undermines the very ground on which we are standing.</p>

A.i. (2001)

Steven Spielberg

<p>Can a robot become a real little boy? Steven Spielberg immerses us in a futuristic world, where, beyond advancements in artificial intelligence, it is the question of humanity that is raised.</p>

A Venezia… un dicembre rosso shocking (Don’t Look Now)

Nicolas Roeg

<p>Director Nicolas Roeg&rsquo;s horror masterpiece still retains the power to shock and has established itself as a seminal work in the genre. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland shine as a married couple mourning the death of their young daughter, clinging on to her memory through a meeting with a mysterious psychic in Venice. Featuring the debut film score from native Venetian composer and pop star Pino Donaggio who subsequently forged a long career in the soundtrack department and a close working relationship with Brian De Palma.</p>

Jurassic Park

Steven Spielberg

<p>During a preview tour, a theme park suffers a major power breakdown that allows its cloned dinosaur exhibits to run amok.</p>

Scala!!!

Jane Giles Ali Catterall

<p>The wild history of the Scala Cinema in King&rsquo;s Cross, London, a repertory house of ill repute with enough nose-thumbing alternative programming, midnight madness, illicit pornography, and transgressive politics that it would make Margaret Thatcher&rsquo;s head explode.</p>

You Can Call Me Bill

Alexandre O. Philippe

<p>An intimate portrait of Star Trek icon William Shatner&rsquo;s personal journey across nine decades of a boldly lived and fully realized life. It strips away all the masks he has worn during his storied career, to reveal the man behind it all. The first and only feature-length documentary dedicated to Shatner&rsquo;s life, career and philosophy, this penetrating documentary delves into his most fervent passions, hopes and concerns, through a thematic distillation of his most recent autobiographical songs and a kaleidoscopic deep dive into the farthest reaches of his filmography including The Twilight Zone, T.J. Hooker and Boston Legal.</p>

Gosti iz galaksije (Visitors from the Arkana Galaxy)

Dušan Vukotić

<p>A science fiction writer is gifted with the ability to materialize his thoughts and inadvertently brings a group of aliens to Earth.</p>

X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes

Roger Corman

<p>While making a research on the visual power of the human eye, Dr. James Xavier discovers a radioactive preparation capable of increasing man&rsquo;s sight indefinitely. However his experiments do not receive any support from the Foundation he works for, and therefore he decides to test his invention upon himself, although Diane, his fianc&eacute;e and his friend Brant try desperately to discourage him. At the hospital where he has moved, Xavier begins to see inside the patients&rsquo; bodies, but nobody believes in his power, and Brant tries once more to prevent him from continuing his insane experiments. The film was awarded the Silver Spaceship in 1963.</p>

Posjet iz svemira (A Visit From the Space)

Zlatko Grgić

<p>Childish imagination creates a universe when a young girl meets an alien.</p>

Anno 3003

Ivo Lehpamer

<p>Humanity in the age of automatism.</p>

Popletená planeta (The Confused Planet)

Pavel Prochazka

<p>A schoolkid who skips school boards a rocket and reaches a planet where everything is upside down. The boy helps its inhabitants to build a rocket but as he is bad at maths the result is a regular disaster.</p>

Kybernetická babička (The Cybernetic Grandma)

Jiří Trnka

<p>A child traverses a forbidding technological wasteland to meet (surprise!) her uncanny new robotic grandmother.</p>

La Brûlure de mille soleils (The Heat of a Thousand Suns)

Pierre Kast

<p>A depressed millionaire poet, accompanied by his cat Marcel and a sign language robot, travels in time to shake a persistent feeling of ennui and falls hopelessly in love with a woman from another planet.</p>

Operation x-70 (1971)

Raoul Servais

<p>A mighty state is experimenting with a new kind of gas that does not kill, but stuns its victims and puts them in a mystical state. Accidentally, the X-70 bombs are dropped on a friendly neighbouring state, where strange mutations occur.</p>

Babfilm (Scenes with Beans)

Ottó Foky

<p>An extraterrestrial arrives on a planet inhabited by beans and observes their daily lives, including a traffic accident, farming, a football match and the launch of a spaceship.</p>

Les escargots (The Snails)

René Laloux

<p>In a distant planetoid, an industrious but hapless old farmer strives to make his vegetables flourish, however, to no avail.</p>

The Longest Goodbye

Ido Mizrahy

<p>Ever wondered what the reality of spending months on a spaceship might be like? Not the romanticized, exciting vision of a space mission, but the fundamentals of day-to-day reality: the isolation, confinement, and lack of privacy and social contact. Sounds similar to our pandemic lives, you might think. But in this case, it&rsquo;s your job, and sadly you can&rsquo;t escape to the woods when you&rsquo;re feeling blue.</p> <p>In his engrossing, heartwarming, and beautifully contemplative documentary, Ido Mizrahy ponders the conflict between our need for connectivity and the urge to explore the unknown. Scientists predict that we will have the ability to send humans to Mars (and to return them safely) within the next decade. Dr. Al Holland, a senior NASA psychologist, studies the effects of prolonged separation of individuals from Earth. <em>The Longest Goodbye </em>offers us an opportunity to witness as Dr. Holland investigates the ways to provide support and coping mechanisms to the red planet-bound explorers in order to prepare them for the actuality of becoming a long-mission astronaut.</p>

Low-Tech

Adrien Bellay

<p>The solution to the climate crisis is already here if you ask the growing low tech movement, who insist that with simple means and great ingenuity, it is possible to live a modern life without destroying the planet.</p>

Plastic Fantastic

Isa Willinger

<p>Plastics are everywhere. They are not just in our rivers and oceans, they permeate the air and soil and also our bodies. While the crisis deepens and recycling is far from working, the plastics industry continues to ramp up production. Does the industry want to keep going on like they have in the past? PLASTIC FANTASTIC follows several protagonists, on the one hand representatives of the plastics industry and on the other scientists and activists, to find out where the plastics crisis is leading us.</p>

The UFO's of Soesterberg

Bram Roza

<p>In the early morning of February 3, 1979, a mysterious object flew over Soesterberg Air Base. At least twelve soldiers witnessed this. Despite being in the middle of the cold war this event has still remained unexplained. And that is not the only anomalous sighting in that specific part of the Netherlands...</p>

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde // Sonorizzazione Effetto Brama

John S. Robertson

<p>Dr. Henry Jekyll is an irreproachable doctor, dedicated to his patients and actively committed to scientific research. Intrigued by the opinions on the double nature of human beings of his father-in-law, Sir George Carew, he begins a series of experiments which will soon lead him to discover a serum able to separate good from evil. Jekyll does not hesitate to test the serum himself: he transforms into his evil double, Mr. Hyde. In order to musically express the great theme of the dualism of reason and impulse, the duo Di Benedetto and Minguzzi experiment with the timbre and sound ambience created by their unusual instruments.</p>

Solaris Mon Amour

Kuba Mikurda

<p>A found footage documentary inspired by Stanislaw Lem&#39;s &quot;Solaris&quot;. A trance-like, personal story about loss, mourning and memory. The film consists of excerpts from films produced by the Educational Film Studio in Lodz in 1960s.</p> <p>The same year that Alain&nbsp;Resnais&rsquo;s&nbsp;masterpiece&nbsp;<em>Hiroshima&nbsp;mon&nbsp;amour</em>&nbsp;was released,&nbsp;science fiction writer and theorist&nbsp;Stanisław Lem began&nbsp;writing&nbsp;his&nbsp;influential novel&nbsp;<em>Solaris</em>,&nbsp;an artistic&nbsp;confluence that inspires this&nbsp;wholly original&nbsp;and emotionally resonant&nbsp;found footage&nbsp;film,&nbsp;which&nbsp;underscores&nbsp;the theme of post-traumatic&nbsp;memory that informs both texts.&nbsp;Mikurda,&nbsp;editor Laura Pawela,&nbsp;and composer/sound designer Marcin&nbsp;Lenarczyk&nbsp;bring together&nbsp;clips from&nbsp;70 films produced by the Educational Film Studio in Lodz in the 1960s, as well as&nbsp;the first radio adaptations of&nbsp;<em>Solaris</em>, to create an entrancing, spectral incantation of&nbsp;loss, mourning, and&nbsp;memory.&nbsp; (Museum of Moving Image)</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

Fuori dalla caverna

Alessio Attardi Nina J. Kors

<p>Walking around the INFN labs around Italy, small groups of young people discover what it means to do physics, who are the modern scientists, the meaning of thinking about the future while making fundamental research. The young adults are surprised to see first-hand an international scientific excellence made of concreteness and ideas, and even beauty, passion, desire for the future and irony.</p>

L’altro lato della lama (The Other Side of the Blade)

Daniele Cucumazzo

<p>It&rsquo;s the first day of school for Anna, a young introvert unable to integrate with her schoolfriends or allow her teachers to understand her. The hostility makes her fall through a descending spiral towards insanity: but Anna is not the only one to roam the school corridors&hellip; or is she?</p>

Knit’s Island

Ekiem Barbier Guilhem Causse Quentin L’helgoualc'h

<p>Shot entirely in a virtual environment, Knit&rsquo;s Island is an exceptionally cinematic and contemplative documentary. The film is set in a rural game world that is both impressively realistic and uncannily not quite right. What is still &ldquo;real&rdquo; in this virtual existence, which will probably play an important role in the lives of more and more people in the future? With this question, the filmmakers set out to explore the sparsely populated 250 square kilometers of the game.</p> <p>They encounter zombies, dodge shootings, and speak to a disconcerting group who set out simply to kill as many other participants as possible. Above all, they meet players who spend hundreds or thousands of hours here, roaming, growing food, forming communities.</p> <p>&ldquo;Sometimes I confuse my digital memories with those in real life,&rdquo; a player says. &ldquo;This virtual nature reminds me of my homeland, Australia,&rdquo; says another in Berlin. The boundaries between role-play and reality gradually fade &ndash; all the more so during Covid lockdowns, when for many players, the video game became their most important &ldquo;outside world.&rdquo;</p>