Awardwinners InScience 2024

Furthermore, the short film Strangers in the Dark took home the 3S – Short Science Stories Award from the student jury. The documentary El Equipo was rated as the best science film by the audience. This film wins 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 Het Klokhuis (NTR) website, where more than 8,000 votes were cast.

The documentary A Year in a Field is a silent cry about the climate crisis and a challenging musing 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.”

This year’s 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 last year 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, as a storyteller, tries to add something positive to the world, with the message being leading. Professor Enny Das (Radboud University) conducts research into the power of stories and studies how communication can influence people’s behavior.

The best Short science film of InScience 2024 was awarded the Short Science Stories Award. The InScience Student Jury selected Strangers in the Dark, by directors Jenni Pystynen and Perttu Inkilä, as the best short science film of this edition. In this experimental film we learn how light pollution makes the love life of fireflies hell: how are they supposed to find a partner when it is no longer dark at night?

The Student Jury praised the film for its striking images, very detailed shots and poetic approach. “The film engages the viewer from a unique microscopic perspective, shedding light on a larger problem. In this way, the viewer is forced to think about his own impact on other beings, and learns to empathize with other life forms on this earth.”

This year’s NTR Audience Award went to the documentary El Equipo by director Bernardo Ruiz, which shows how science became a pillar of a universal fight for human rights. The story starts in the 1980s, when a group of Argentine students decide to help legendary forensic scientist Clyde Snow with his investigation into the desaparacidos – the thousands of people who ‘disappeared’ during the Argentine dictatorship in the years before. With success, because in the decades that followed this team was called upon all over the world to dig for the truth behind massacres and mass graves, from Kurdistan to Ethiopia to the horrific El Mozoto massacre in El Salvador. Scientists everywhere manage to uncover the truth, but that is not without danger.

The study ‘Spieken mag niet, maar wel in het ziekenhuis’ is the winner of the eighth Klokhuis Wetenschapsprijs. For the winning project, Britt Müller and Charlotte Poot from the Hospital Hero Foundation and the Leiden University Medical Center developed a game that children can play in preparation for their visit to the hospital. With this science prize, Het Klokhuis and InScience reward interesting and relevant scientific research for children from 9 to 12 years old. Klokhuis will make an episode about the winning research, which will premiere on InScience next year and then be broadcast.

More than 60 studies have been submitted by Dutch universities, UMCs and colleges, ten of which were nominated by the editorial staff of Het Klokhuis. Children chose this winner via the website of Het Klokhuis (NTR).