Itto, a young woman from a modest rural background, is slowly adapting to the codes of Moroccan privilege with her husband's family. But when supernatural events put the country in a state of emergency, Itto finds herself separated from her husband and new family. Alone, pregnant and looking for her way back, amidst strange events and inscrutable messages from the natural world, she finds emancipation.

Animalia | Sofia Alaoui, 2023, Morocco / Qatar / France, 91 min, fiction.

A spate of robberies in Southern California schools had an oddly specific target: tubas. In this work of creative nonfiction, d/Deaf first-time feature director Alison O'Daniel presents the impact of these crimes from an unexpected angle. Blending documentary and fictionalized performances and set to an L.A. landscape/soundscape never quite seen before, this film explores a dimensional experience of deafness and reorients the audience auditorily in an unfamiliar and exhilarating way.

The Tuba Thieves is intended to be screened to mixed hearing, hard of hearing and d/Deaf audiences. In order to accommodate all of our audience members, this film always screens with Open Captions, and can also be experienced with Audio Descriptions.

The Tuba Thieves | Allison O'Daniel, 2023, United States, 91 min, experimental docufiction.

FollowThree experiences of sound in film in troubled times: the crackle of threatened hemlocks, disaster as finely orchestrated dance in labs and greenhouses, and the rich but worrisomely diminishing sonic ecologies of birds. Inverting and extending the sonic (and silent) themes of opening night's The Tuba Thieves, here sound mediates climate, self, and unseen worlds.

Followed by a conversation and Q&A with filmmaker Sarah Ema Friedland.

"And when I die let me be buried in a Hemlock coffin, so I'll go through hell snapping." | Sarah Ema Friedland, 2023, United States, 8 min, experimental fiction.
HUBRIS | Jules de Niverville, 2023, Canada, 30 min, dance docufiction.
The Last of the Nightingales | Masha Karpoukhina, 2022, United States, 32 min, documentary.

Total Run Time: 70 min

Simulated citizens, cybernetic surgeons, and technologically-confused anatomies: these are the new residents of an increasingly automated, scanned, and digitized world. The films in this program race along the criss-crossing wires of our electronically-ersatz hyperpresent, from an Edenic garden swarming with generative textures, to the a place beneath the spotlights of the modeling world, where a full-body-scanned likeness offers an ambivalent escape from whirlwind shoots and constant travel. Elsewhere, in the near future, medical robotics seize a free moment to break for a game of chess.

Pink Noise | Martin Wiklund, Athrur Lemaitre & Ulysse Lefort, 2022, France, 2 min, experimental animation.
E6-D7 | Eno Swinnen, 2023, Belgium, 16 min, fiction animation.
Issues with my Other Half | Anna Vasof, 2022, Austria, 6 min, experimental.
I Thought I Was Hearing Citizens | Manu Luksch & Mukul Patel, 2023, Austria, 6 min, experimental.
Uncanny Me | Katharina Pethke, 2022, Germany, 44 min, documentary.

Total Running Time: 74 min

TerraForma is the story of the remote volcanic island of Ascension, which sat smoldering for a million years largely devoid of life, until its radical transformation by process of 'terraforming' into a tropical paradise.

But there is more to this island than meets the eye. The Victorian naturalists who transformed this island reshaped the ecology to fit the political and economic demands of their society - but only at the expense of what existed before it. The new environment, seemingly a paradise, was in fact a mirage. A mirror image of their ambition, their empire, and their understanding of the world. And as such it was doomed to fail. Many believe that future plans to geo-engineer our planet, or terraform others, would simply follow the same pattern.

With the help of experts in the fields of geo-engineering, ecology, politics, and design, TerraForma explores the lessons we could learn from Ascension Island. And what its story may mean for our planet, in a future where terraformed landscapes and human-engineered environments may come to warp our understanding of 'nature' itself.

TerraForma | Laurence Durkin & Kevin Brennan, 2023, Ireland, 62 min, experimental documentary.


Preceded by:

San Borondón is a mythical island that appears and disappears. It has appeared on maps throughout history in the vicinity of the Canary Island. The legend of the island of San Borondón became so pervasive that, during the XVI, XVI and XVIII centuries, expeditions were organized to find and conquer it. After centuries of oblivion, it has finally been found.

Bloom | Helena Girón & Samuel M. Delgado, Spain, 2023, 18 min, experimental docufiction.

Artist Neil Harbisson was born color blind, but an antenna drilled into his skull enables him to hear colors and today he is the world's first officially recognised cyborg. Meet a man who may be the prototype of the human of the future.

There are no others like Neil Harbisson out there – at least not yet. As the world's first officially recognised cyborg, he is a unique creature and on a dedicated mission for the right to design himself. Born color-blind, artist Harbisson has an antenna implanted in his skull that enables him to hear color and, along with his collaborators, he tours the world talking about being a cyborg. Unfortunately, not everyone shares Harbisson's tech-optimism, and he has faced death threats from conservative zealots who see the symbiosis between man and machine as blasphemous. A film from the technological forefront about a cyborg who may be the prototype of the human of the future.

Cyborg: A Documentary | Carey Born, 2023, Australia / Denmark / Spain / United Kingdom / United States, 87 min, documentary.

Followed by a conversation and Q&A with filmmaker Carey Born!

How does an intrepid film make its way, through jungles of images, seas of sound, and often years of conceptualizing and production, to the screen? In partnership with DCTV, we're excited to present Science New Wave Field Notes, an exclusive glimpse into the production process with a few of our favorite filmmakers, and even scientists working with video. The event also serves as launch for the latest feature from our sister-site Labocine, which will now allow the incorporation of filmmaking Field Notes directly into film pages, allowing viewers a deeper dive into fascinating work. Much of the labor of filmmaking -- hours of experiments, outtakes, and test footage, not to mention scrapped scripts, endless interview transcriptions, and deep research into tangential leads -- ends up invisible in the final creation. This night of film talks, and Labocine's Field Notes hereafter, offer a glimpse of some of that hidden wealth.

The event will wrap up with a reception, so grab a drink and catch up with some of the filmmakers, meet other members of the Science New Wave, and make plans for your next cinematic expedition. This will serve as our opening party!

*Note: The cinema's entrance is around the corner on White Street between Lafayette and Centre Streets.

In the near future, there are no more animals or plants on Earth and the remaining humans are living under a plastic dome. The price for their continuing survival is very high: at the age of 50, they are implanted with a special seed that turns them into a tree which will provide oxygen and food for the community. A young man, Stefan, accepts this system – until the day his wife Nóra decides to give up her life and undergo voluntary implantation. Driven by his love for her, Stefan decides to break the rules of society in order to save her.

Animation duo Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó created their dystopian epic using rotoscoping techniques. The screenplay was developed with contributions from geologists, botanists and meteorologists, thus providing its fantasy-laden story with a solid, scientific grounding. A deeply moving eco-fantasy that deals head-on with the climate apocalypse threatening life on Earth, Műanyag égbolt is a film imbued with the melancholy of those most aware of how close humankind is to extinction. Although, as is the case for the couple at the center of this beguiling love story, this burden is lightened by their keen sense of the world's beauty.

White Plastic Sky | Tibor Bánóczki & Sarolta Szabó, 2023, Hungary, 111 min, animated fiction.

Like many 13-year-olds, Emi is a little embarrassed by his mildly quirky parents and grandfather – sometimes he wishes they were bankers like ordinary people instead of magicians preparing to launch Croma Kid, their own TV show. Having grown up with a TV studio in the basement, Emi is a total tech-head and very well-versed in all the hottest audio-visual technology that 1993 has to offer. One day, while he's messing around with the chroma key machine that creates the effects of the magic show, it breaks. In his attempt to replace it, Emi comes across a device that just happens to open portals to other dimensions – and winds up transporting Mum and Dad somewhere else in the multiverse. Now, Emi has to put all his gearhead skills to use and do some manipulation of the past to bring them home.

Croma Kid | Pablo Chea, 2023, Dominican Republic, 92 min, fiction.

What dreams occupy the places we've left behind? In an abandoned gold mine, scientists search for evidence of dark matter, while in an empty school in Japan, sleep studies manifest even more unknowable forces. Meanwhile, our automated replacements milk cows, serve drinks, and patrol the streets of empty model cities. In the end, perhaps remaining useful, for an outmoded human, requires drastic measures.

Followed by a conversation and Q&A with filmmaker Carin Leong.

Stillness of Labor | Chris Larson, 2023, United States, 9 min, experimental.
Metabolism | Misho Antadze, 2023, The Netherlands, 12 min, experimental documentary.
Theta | Lawrence Lek, 2022, United Kingdom, 12 min, experimental fiction.
Waiting Space | Carin Leong, 2023, United States, 12 min, documentary.
Retrodreaming | Alisa Berger, 2022, Germany / Japan, 18 min, experimental fiction.
Human Resources | Trinidad Plass Caussade, Titouan Tillier, & Isaac Wenzek, 2023, France, 4 min, animated fiction.

Total Run Time: 67 min

A Peruvian father labors patiently, chipping at the white volcanic stone that forms an extraordinary landscape. His son is part of the modern world: he uses cameras and drones in order to create the digital model of a church on a computer. Separated by the mysterious death of the wife/mother figure in the family, these men do not connect. And yet their paths cross in a ghostly manner, as do their professions: each in their own way works with textures and volumes, sensations and perceptions. Can the realm of digital art recreate and revivify the old world? Can it also awaken hearts grown lonely and cold?

Cielo Abierto | Felie Esperza, 2023, Chile, 65 min, docufiction.


Preceded by:

An "afronaut" emerges from the wreckage of his spaceship in the volcanic crater of Mount Nyiragongo. As he encounters the people of present-day Goma in the city, he begins to understand how to change the future for his people.

Mulika | Maisha Maene, 2022, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 14 min, fiction.

Within the human struggle to live and work, and with the materials for survival available for exploitation, seemingly foreign worlds are intertwined in the modern battlefield of patents, ownership, and colonialism. Delving into labor and science practices, A Common Sequence examines who gets to work with the essentials of life — saving animals from extinction, researching medicine, harvesting food, coding the genome — in our modern world controlled by data.

Filmmakers Mary Helena Clark and Mike Gibisser take us to the areas and people involved in these physical and political worlds with an intuitive visual style, letting the audience experience each location's atmosphere. Take the achoque salamander, which can regenerate limbs and even its heart, the intellectual property rights of apple trees, and the commodification of human DNA. The film eloquently guides us through the philosophy of what is "common" to everyone in nature and the complicated pursuits of owning materials of the planet and even our bodies, whether for conservation or for sale. The resulting discussion could change all our lives!

A Common Sequence | Mary Helena Clark & Mike Gibisser, 2023, United States, 80 min, experimental documentary.

Followed by a conversation and Q&A with filmmaker Mary Helena Clark.

Preceded by:

A mystical sci-fi based on Saint Teresa de Avila's writings. Inside a ghostly mausoleum that is an artifact of both the past, and future, these nuns are being affected by a black hole. Ecstasy is an eerie exploration of pleasure.

Ecstasy | Carolina Costa, 2023, Mexico, 8 min, experimental fiction.

The human race is old, but rocks are timeless. Weaving stunning imagery with evocative text and interviews, Last Things observes the history of all of us and this planet Earth through the most essential parts — evolution and extinction, from the POV of rocks. The immensity of our existence is hard to fathom, and we are obsessed with our past, looking for reasons. A huge journey we should take on a cinema screen.

In a distinctive style seen throughout her long career, Deborah Stratman skillfully combines pure science with speculative fiction, not to give you an answer to the meaning of life, but to provide sounds, images, and ideas to contemplate. Using both microscopic and landscape photography, we see the luscious textures of rocks and matter and our handprints on it. Texts from writers enhance the journey, ranging from the creators of the science fiction genre to experts of stream-of-consciousness reflections. Stratman blurs the borders of poetry, narrative, and fact in an ethereal adventure. As one interviewee states, "Rocks have a history, but they don't remember it."

Last Things | Deborah Stratman, 2023, United States, 50 min, experimental fiction essay.


Preceded by:

The inhabitants of a city awake one morning to find that never-before-seen trees, plants, and flowers suddenly erupted throughout the streets and in the squares. Strange and mysterious events start taking place as Camelia and Nahla investigate the origins of these new and peculiar creatures.

The Secret Garden | Nour Ouayda, 2023, Lebanon, 27 min, experimental fiction.

What are the representative landscapes of the Anthropocene? Here, workers labor to reclaim precious metals from vast landfills or cultivate flowers in toxic gardens, while researchers coax verdant life into existence amidst frigid snowfields to test the possibilities of photosynthesis in space. A triptych on our fabricated environment, whether planned or unplanned.

Terra Mater | Kantarama Gahigiri, 2023, Rwanda, 10 min, fiction.
A field that no longer smells of flowers | César Flores Correa, 2023, Mexico, 19 min, documentary.
The Antarctic Gardener | Elisa Strinna, 2023, The Netherlands, 24 min, docufiction.

Total Run Time: 53 min

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.

The Visitors | Veronika Lišková, 2022, Czech Republic, 83 min, documentary.

Through moments in the lives of three groups of girls, images gleaned from the web and live streams of young women around the world, BLOOM delves into the world of today's teenage girls. We delicately observe a hyper-connected but lonely generation inhabited by great lucidity, an inner struggle with self-image obsession, and a need for self-affirmation in the face of a complex sense of alienation.

Bloom | Fanie Pelletier, 2023, Canada, 84 min, documentary.


Preceded by:

2048. Google owns most of the planet and is now run by Mark Zuckerberg. He finds a cure for death, through a digital immortality software that allows him to download himself into a hologram. While it is reserved for an elite group of rich and powerful men, a group of hackers seizes the source code of this program containing the antidote of immortality and makes it accessible to the whole world.

WhatRemains, Genesis | Lou Fauroux, 2023, France, 19 min, fiction.

In a forest on the outskirts of Barcelona an old shepherd and his flock live alongside a high-tech laboratory for animal experimentation. Two opposite worlds facing each other. Two worlds that are two sides of the same coin. While the shepherd, afflicted with a bone disease, witnesses his profession disappearing, scientists are busier than ever researching the covid vaccine. 'Fauna' is a science fiction fable about the relationship between humans, animals and science in post-pandemic times.

Fauna | Pau Faus, 2023, Spain, 74 min, fiction.

In the Brazilian Amazon, an indigenous community battles a move by the government to open up their lands to industrial exploitation. In Ecuador, a farmer voyages through the mysterious landscapes of the afterlife. And half a world apart in northern Scandinavia, a young "Protector of the Land" undergoes a ritual confrontation with nature.

Willkawiwa (The Sacred Fiire of the Dead) | Pável Quevedo Ullauri, 2023, Ecuador, 15 min, fiction.
Anoana | Line Klungseth Johansen, 2022, Norway, 5 min, music video.
Holding Up the Sky | Pieter Van Eecke, 2023, Brazil, 52 min, documentary.

Total Run Time: 72 min

Our bodies may defy our intentions and control. In this program we'll look at the ambiguities of hormones, the challenges of disability, the anxieties of sensory anomaly, and even the eerie promise of speculative gastronomical reconfiguration. But in these shape-shifting experiments in documentary and fictional storytelling, we find evidence that even our most critical somatic disconnects may be sublimated into poetry.

Followed by a conversation and Q&A with filmmaker Jennifer Reeves.

Well Wishes My Love, Your Love | Gabriel Gabriel Garble, 2023, Malaysia, 9 min, fiction animation.
Hormonal | Pien van Grinsven, 2023, The Netherlands, 12 min, dance documentary.
Cabbage | Holly Márie Parnell, 2023, Canada, 25 min, experimental documentary.
Pigment-Dispersion Syndrome | Jennifer Reeves, 2022, United States, 6 min, experimental.
68.415 | Antonella Sabatino & Stefano Blasi, 2022, Italy, 20 min, fiction.

Total Run Time: 72 min

It is Palestinian custom to harvest and forage for plants but they must do so illegally under Israeli law—a process documented in this visual feast, from field to kitchen. Under Israeli law, it is illegal to harvest wild plants that are traditionally used for cooking, such as za'atar (thyme) and akkoub (gundelia), though the practice has been an age-old tradition among Palestinians. In the occupied Golan Heights, Galilee and Jerusalem, locals show their resilience despite the prohibitive law, refusing to be further alienated from their land. From field to kitchen to courtroom, Foragers reveals the joy and knowledge embedded in this Palestinian custom. Imbued with suspense and humor, Foragers is an important commentary on the extent of the Israeli occupation of Palestine—where violence is not only physical, but also cultural.

Foragers | Jumana Manna, 2023, Palestine, 64 min, docufiction.


Preceded by another view of botanical colonialism:

Early films of Patagonia show a land that no longer exists, pine trees have replaced the ancient Araucaria trees. Near my new home in Brussels, Araucarias adorn front yards. How have they become a petty bourgeois fad here? What do these representations tell us about our times?

The Despair of Monkeys | Julián García Long, 2023, France / Belgium, 17 min, experimental documentary.

At the Natural History Museum in Vienna, everything that is found on earth and in outer space and that humans can get their hands on, is collected, archived, and studied in the name of evolutionary research. Archiv der Zukunft captures the aesthetic appeal of the natural-history collection and its working process, illuminating the mammoth project of knowledge preservation and production hidden behind the building's imperial façade.

Archive of the Future | Joerg Burger, 2022, Austria, 92 min, documentary.

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.

Herbaria | Leandro Listorti, 2022, Argentina, 83 min, experimental documentary.


Preceded by:

Thoughts ripple over the pages of a personal notebook, kept during a stay at different science labs in Zürich. They float from one to another, like a mind map of unfinished ideas on memory, medical imaging, cells, and aging.

Beautiful Figures | Soetkin Verstegen, 2022, Belgium, 4 min, experimental animation.

Boundaries between the human and animal worlds become fuzzy in this trio of coming-of-age stories. In near-future Indonesia, animal transformation via black magic has been legalized but racial tensions between humans remain. In an all-too-present U.S.A., a middle-schooler at science camp finds uncomfortable metaphors in amphibian biology. And in a glitch-punk dystopian Philippines, a teen forms a life-altering bond with a lab-escapee catfish. Prepare for a wild ride through the emotive, political, and possibly psychoactive possibilities of sci-narrative.

Followed by a conversation with actor Anne Yasmine of Sawo Matang.

Sawo Matang | Andrea Nirmala Widjajanto, 2023, Indonesia, 21 min, fiction.
Sound to Sea | Ryan Craver, 2023, United States, 26 min, fiction.
Hito | Stephen Lopez, 2022, Philippines, 22 min, fiction.

Total Run Time: 69 min

Light Needs is an experimental documentary about houseplants who cohabitate with people and the surprisingly intimate and complex relationships that can develop between them. Containing footage collected from many different domestic and professional spaces over several years, each home/site evidences the different ways people cohabitate with and relate to plants. Yet, this film is ardently not a document of houseplants but rather a consideration of the benefits and losses accrued through the social contracts between plant and animal. By directly attending to the relationships humans have with nonhumans, Light Needs looks to shine a light on the responsibility for care towards other living beings.

Light Needs | Jesse McLean, 2023, United States, 72 min, experimental documentary.

Followed by a conversation and Q&A with filmmaker Jesse McLean.


Preceded by:

A father finds shelter in the memories he created together with his daughter to whom he hasn't spoken in years. The film transforms into a go-between in an attempt to unite them through images, sounds, and letters.

The Silence of The Banana Trees | Eneos Carka, 2022, Hungary, 24 min, documentary.

The Night Visitors is a movie about moths. In large and small fragments, looking both inward and out, through a critical lens that is by turns social and personal, the film closely examines these underknown creatures. While The Night Visitors is interested in moths as organisms, with fascinating life histories, staggering biodiversity, and a functional importance as indicators of climate change and habitat degradation, its engagement with them is not primarily entomological. Instead, the film looks at moths as aesthetic beings and as carriers of meaning, aiming for a deep encounter with the beauty and incommensurability of the profoundly other.

The small hours of the night are threaded through with a sense of mortality and loss. Moths, with their trembling and exquisite impermanence, provide both a kind of solace and, in their diversity and difference, a focal point around which the desire to know can be organized.

The Night Visitors | Michael Gitlin, 2023, United States, 72 min, experimental documentary.

Followed by a conversation and Q&A with filmmaker Michael Gitlin.


Preceded by:

Between ethnography and reverie, the film enters the in-between spaces of dreams to explore how human and nonhuman social cartographies arise through dreaming alongside a Mapuche family in the south of Chile.

The Departing Images | Ana Edwards, 2023, Chile, 11 min, experimental documentary.

After the largest mining dam breaks in history, further dam collapses threaten millions in Brazil. A state counselor confronts the government's modus operandi, while dam refugees resist the mining companies' abuses in their threatened communities.

Rejeito | Pedro de Filippis, 2023, Brazil, 75 min, documentary.

Testimonials and negotiations from a motley bestiary of our neighbors in the biosphere: young blue jays debate with the wind before flight, fireflies and corals express desperation over human-induced shifts in their environments, bats swarm over Texas. But while biologists transmit signals to help protect the bats they love, a conference is organized to better exploit giant speaking newts. Elsewhere, termites labor on undeterred by any human aims or desires.

Minutes | Matthew Wolkow, 2023, Canada, 5 min, experimental.
Strangers in the Dark | Jenni Pystynen & Perttu Inkilä, 2023, Finland, 12 min, experimental.
The Newt Congress | Matthias Sahli & Immanuel Esser, 2022, Switzerland, 16 min, fiction.
Batsies | Elizabeth Unger, 2023, United States, 14 min, documentary.
Silent extinction | Maja Friis, 2023, Denmark, 12 min, documentary.
White Ant | Shalini Adnani, 2023, United Kingdom / India, 14 min, fiction.

Total Run Time: 73 min

"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.

The Arc of Oblivion | Ian Cheney, 2023, United States, 98 min, documentary.


Preceded by:

A portrait of my mother, my tortoise, and mild winters: In 2009, I moved from my home in Salzburg, Austria, to the United States. The care of my pet tortoise, Tony, fell upon my mother, Kathleen. Tony's species, native to the Mediterranean, hibernate several months each winter at a predictable temperature. Our family's garage used to provide these conditions, but recent erratic winters forced my mother to find a more reliable, future-facing solution. What's revealed is an intimately amusing story of familial relationships rising to the occasion of unpredictable climate change, in which providing mindful care, above all, plays a crucial role.

Testudo Hermanni | G. Anthony Svatek, 2023, Austria, 7 min, documentary.

Followed by a conversation and Q&A with filmmaker G. Anthony Svatek.

Marina's face has suddenly changed. As in a Kafka-esque nightmare, one day in her thirties her face ceased to be what it was. Who is she now? Through Marina's story, the film delves into a reflection around the meaning of the face, emblem of our identity and nerve center of how we connect with others, human or non-human. Can we be somebody beyond our face, beyond our image?

The Face of the Jellyfish | Melisa Liebenthal, 2023, Argentina, 75 min, fiction.

Be the first to see the films of this year's weeklong Art-Sci collaboration in the Symbiosis Competition and catch the awards ceremony of the 16th Science New Wave Festival, selected by our jury of Luminaries, at our closing party!