InScience 2024

The festival opened with a Brainlanding, led by renowned brain scientist Peter Hagoort. Through a live connection with the Donders Institute the audience in the cinema hall could look into the head of a test subject, who was presented with a number of film fragments in an MRI scanner a few kilometers away.

The festival program was divided into a number of thematic sections. Nature is Calling presented the best films about ecology and nature. Films Gone Nuclear consisted of several new titles about the development and aftermath of the atomic bomb. Countermovements investigated the role of scientists in activism. With Van Eigen Bodem we presented Dutch science films and programs. Within Science for Dreamers we screened films that addressed scientific ideas in a creative way. Finally, this year there was a theme program again, this time focusing on language in all its forms.

This year’s Big Ideas lecture was given by David and Jessie Peterson, the world-famous conlang couple who devised entire languages ​​for Game of Thrones, both Dune films, Elemental and various Marvel productions. In their lecture they delved deeper into how creating a language actually works, and what we learn about the inner workings of language by creating a completely new language.

The documentary A Year in a Field won the InScience International Grand Jury Award during the ninth edition of InScience Film Festival in Nijmegen.The documentary is a silent cry about the climate crisis and a challenging meditation on what life is. Filmmaker Christopher Morris, previously awarded three BAFTA awards, kept a meter-high monolith in an English field company for a year. The InScience International Grand Jury praised the film for its “rich contemplative approach to the challenges facing humanity. The documentary invites the audience to take a less human-centered perspective, taking the viewer into the slow and steady pace of a non-living entity – with humor, panache and beautiful music.”

Furthermore, the short film Strangers in the Dark was awarded the 3S – Short Science Stories Award by the student jury. The documentary El Equipo was rated most highly by visitors. This film won the NTR Audience Award. The study ‘Spieken mag niet, maar wel in het ziekenhuis’ has won the Klokhuis Wetenschapsprijs. Children chose this winner via the website of Het Klokhuis (NTR), where more than 8,000 votes were cast.

In 2024, the International Grand Jury consisted of four international professionals from the worlds of film and science. Multi-award winning filmmaker Martin Dohrn won the audience award at InScience 2023 for his film My Garden of a Thousand Bees. This film can be viewed on NPO Start. Irem Couchouron is deputy director and head of program of Silbersalz Science & Media Festival. Filmmaker Safi Graauw has a background in Earth Studies and tries to add something positive to the world as a storyteller while keeping the message central. Professor Enny Das (Radboud University) conducts research into the power of stories and studies how communication can influence people’s behavior.