International Grand Jury Award

At the end of the nineteenth century, idealistic ethnologist Alexander Hoffmann travels to Namibia. There he witnesses what is now seen as the first genocide of the twentieth century: the slaughter of the Herero and Nama people by the German colonisers.

A dazzling feature film that sheds light on the dangers of pseudoscience, in the form of a historical drama set at a time when skull measuring was still a scientific research method – and was even used to justify horrific colonial violence.

This phenomenal film delves into dark matter, but gloriously manages to make hard science sparkle off the screen. In 2015, a group of Italian physicists managed to prove Einstein’s theory about gravitational waves. They depicted their scientific breakthrough in this unique dance documentary, in which they whirl through their own offices and laboratories and show how their success was certainly not without setbacks.

A film that translates abstract theory into dizzying dance, set between devices to measure what we cannot see and capture what we cannot express.

The German artist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) laid the foundation for entomology with her study of insects. For example, she recorded the metamorphosis from caterpillars into butterflies in beautiful engravings, and she was the first to draw insects together with the plants on which they live.

Dutch filmmaker and media artist Pim Zwier delves into her life and work with this fascinating film, in a mix of nature documentary, costume drama and art project in which 17th-century drawings and paintings come to life in a unique way. Zwier was a guest at InScience 2023 last year, where his previous film O – collecting eggs despite the times was shown.

It has been standing guard for millennia, a meters-high monolith in an English field. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Christopher Morris kept this rock company for a year and made a contemplative and poetic documentary about time and geological patience.

The film is also a silent cry about the climate crisis and a penetrating meditation on what life is. A film full of ideas that resonate deeply, told as a penetrating dream that shakes you awake.

In a universe made up of forces that want to tear everything to pieces, why are people so determined to leave a mark on Earth? For his new documentary, filmmaker Ian Cheney delves into the attic of his own memory in search of the driving forces behind our human urge to collect.

His quest begins with building an ark on a field in Maine, aiming to preserve the archive of his own life from the relentless ticking of time. He invites a number of guests here to talk about their memories, including Werner Herzog. The lively documentary then travels all over the world: to salt mines in the Alps, fjords in the Arctic and ancient libraries in the Sahara.