“The gods need not hurry, they have eternity ahead…” wrote the Strugatsky brothers in their renowned novel. In this year’s edition of Docs+Science, Karol Jałochowski paraphrases the title of their book, Hard to Be a God, to place humanity squarely in the centre. Does this mean we’ve become as omnipotent as the gods we’ve invented? Is such a thing even possible? The creators of six exceptional documentaries, which will be screened at the 65th Krakow Film Festival in late May and early June, seek answers to these questions and more.
Science and technology have placed us, Homo sapiens, in a peculiar position. Especially recently. We discuss immortality yet receive only bootleg digital substitutes. In laboratory tunnels bored into our dying planet, we record the dances of distant, unimaginably massive celestial bodies. We speak of communities of minds without understanding the mechanisms governing even a single one – our own. We search for life in the cosmos, unable to formulate an unambiguous definition of terrestrial life. We attempt to find our place between what is natural and bionic, animate and mechanical. We function in a superposition of loneliness and hyper-connectivity, helplessness and godlike agency. – explains section curator Karol Jałochowski, journalist, documentarian, and editor-in-chief of the popular science website Pulsar.
New technologies compel us to answer existential questions: When does life end? What is the state called death? What constitutes the essence of personality? Who has the right to control the trails we leave in the digital world? Can we forbid our posthumous, partially self-aware avatars to be created from these fragments? Are we entitled to the privilege of being forgotten? Moritz Riesewieck and Hans Block (creators of the shocking The Cleaners) in their documentary Eternal You, once again explore the least charted territories of the internet. This time they track attempts to recreate people who died. Today, these endeavours exist on the fringes of mainstream events. Tomorrow, perhaps, they’ll become part of everyday life.
War victims, fluffy kittens, influencers’ perfect lips – everything cascades through social media reels. But the act of scrolling no longer evokes emotion, only indifference. It addicts viewers and enslaves creators. Refusing to turn into a zombie, director David Borenstein ventures into the world to examine the nature of this phenomenon. In his documentary Can’t Feel Nothing, he reaches the edges of the map, where trolls, propagandists, and the influence industry produce the world’s most addictive content. He also discovers potential sources of optimism, flowing from the collective nature of Homo sapiens.
In 2014, Copenhagen Zoo authorities decided that a giraffe named Marius should be euthanised. Although justified from a scientific standpoint, the decision triggered an avalanche in terms of social reaction across the globe. It revealed the durability, but also the naivety, of the view that nature is harmonious and peaceful. And it provoked experienced documentarian Max Kestner to question common beliefs about the essence of life, consciousness, and the supposed uniqueness of the human species. The result is a hybrid, poetic, surprising film diary of his investigations, Life and Other Problems.
One hundred years passed between Albert Einstein’s theoretical prediction of gravitational waves and the experimental confirmation of these ripples in the fabric of spacetime. Teams from the University of Rome La Sapienza and the Virgo Research Center played a major role in this achievement. In Surfing Einstein, they express the frustrations and delights, failures and successes of that strange endeavour called scientific research – through body and dance. Together with Meritxell Campos Olivé – director and choreographer – they developed their own unique way of expressing what is most abstract and what words cannot convey.
The world is as our senses perceive it. Our perception of the world results from data processing occurring in our minds. There is no objective world. Non-subjective memories don’t exist. These statements, rather obvious to neuroscientists, find a moving illustration in Landon Van Soest’s Light Darkness Light. The director accompanies blind pastor Ian Nichols as he undergoes pioneering surgery to implant a device stimulating the optic nerve. The darkness which has enveloped the protagonist for decades becomes wonderfully illuminated, but in a way that’s surprising and painful for him, verifying his initial expectations.
Memory and the laws of physics remain in eternal conflict. Essentially, everything that existed, and everyone who lived, has been completely forgotten. The future will be similar, especially since digital storage media are far less durable than stone or paper. The Arc of Oblivion shows Ian Cheney, tormented by this knowledge, construct the titular ark on meadow somewhere in Maine. Its aim is not so much to carry his most precious memories across the ocean of time, but to provoke reflection on what is truly worth saving. Note: the presence of the legendary funnyman Werner Herzog aboard this vessel is a ruse.
Films featured in this year’s Docs+Science:
- Eternal You, dir. Moritz Riesewieck, Hans Block, Germany, USA, 87’, 2024
- Life and Other Problems, dir. Max Kestner, Denmark, Sweden, United Kingdom, 99’, 2024
- Surfing Einstein, dir. Meritxell Campos Olivé, Germany, Italy, 75’, 2024
- Light Darkness Light, dir. Landon Van Soest, Canada, USA, United Kingdom, 83’, 2024
- Can’t Feel Nothing, dir. David Borenstein, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden 81’, 2024
- The Arc of Oblivion, dir. Ian Cheney, USA, 105’, 2023
KFF TALKS also makes a return at this year’s Festival – it’s a series of fascinating meetings and discussions with outstanding figures – also from beyond the film world. These are conversations at the intersection of philosophy, formal and natural sciences, and the humanities about the condition of the world and man’s place in contemporary reality
For many years, Projekt Pulsar has been a partner of Docs+Science and co-organiser of the debate. The Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Applied Computer Science of the Jagiellonian University and the Bliżej Nauki [Closer to Science] project have become new partners of the section.
Passes for the 65th Krakow Film Festival are now on sale!
The Krakow Film Festival is on the exclusive list of film events qualifying for the Academy Awards® in short film categories (fiction, animation, documentary) and feature-length documentary, the European Film Awards in the same categories, and serves as a qualifying event for the BAFTA Awards.
The Krakow Film Festival is organised with financial support from the City of Krakow, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Polish Film Institute, and the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme. The Polish Filmmakers Association serves as co-organiser.
The 65th Krakow Film Festival will be held from 25 May to 1 June 2025, and online on KFF VOD from 30 May to 15 June.