- Film


Year
2025
Language
English spoken, English subtitles
Director
Eleanor Mortimer
Duration
101 min
Can love – for marine biology and the strangest creatures of the ocean – be enough to protect the hidden, undiscovered depths of the planet from the threat of exploitation?
The deep sea: the last unknown region on Earth. Here, biologists marvel at the enigmatic flora and fauna that seem to come from another planet: the depths of the oceans are reminiscent of space.
The extraterrestrial and strange life forms in the darkness capture the imagination. However, the time when the deep sea was the last pristine natural area on Earth may be coming to an end, as deep-sea mining threatens the fragile ecosystems.
How do we protect what we cannot see, what we do not yet know? Because it can take up to 14 years to identify a species, science progresses slowly, while the deep-sea mining industry operates at lightning speed. Marine biologist Karin de Boer and philosopher Teun Joshua Brandt investigate this race against time and why it is important to protect a world that remains largely invisible to us.
Teun Joshua Brandt is a cultural researcher and philosopher at the University of Groningen. He investigates how we invent and tell stories about life that we cannot see directly, from deep-sea animals to microbes. He has written about how these hidden worlds appear in fiction and popular science, and is currently working on an audiovisual project about deep-sea mining.
Release date
InScience International Science Film Festival Nijmegen is one of the largest science film festivals in Europe. The program consists of an overview of the best science films of the year. InScience takes place every spring in Nijmegen, but the festival also tours the country with the best films from the previous edition. This year, Forum Groningen once again features a full InScience On Tour program with the three top films. After each screening, scientists and the audience engage in discussion to share new insights.