The Brain
Jean-Stéphane Bron
Switzerland, France | 2020 | 103 min
Languages : French, English
Subtitles : English, French
In this recent film, Bron is chronicling his imagination as much as the everyday life of science. Following five researchers, the filmmaker captures the moment when science fiction arrives in the laboratory. At the heart of the film lies the dizzying and deeply urgent question: is humankind deliberately “programming” its own obsolescence?
Minimum legal age 10 years, recommended 14 years and over
In the near future, will we be able to recreate human emotions “in silico”, on machines? Neuroscience heavyweights such as Alexandre Pouget seem to think so, and are seeking to understand the functioning of those two symmetrical egg-shaped masses connected by 70 billion neurons, the power of which is equalled only by their fragility - which grabs us from the very opening sequence of Cinq nouvelles du cerveau. If science is a force field in which our potential future is being written, Jean-Stéphane Bron has chosen imagination over discourse to question the ideological and political biases underlying this very modern “cortex rush”. From Seattle to Oxford, Lisbon to Padua, the filmmaker visits five researchers who each hold a unique position with regard to artificial intelligence. Light years away from the techno-beatitude touted by digital big businesses, he tells a human-scale story that happily reaffirms one of the major axes of his documentary making work: turning the cinema machine into a public space of enlightenment.
Emmanuel Chicon
