Star Stuff

Three of the world’s most important and remote astronomical observatories form the centre of the documentary’s narrative – privileged windows onto the Universe, situated in Chile, the Canary Islands and South Africa.

At the heart of the narrative lies the striking contrast between two seemingly opposing worlds: the world of science, with astronomers and researchers who, through sophisticated telescopes, scan the sky night after night; and the world of local communities – the lives and dreams of indigenous communities and the inhabitants of the small, remote villages near these observatories, ordinary people with their own stories to tell and an ancient, unbroken connection to the sky above their heads.

Striking a narrative balance between heaven and earth, Milad Tangshir’s documentary succeeds in connecting the universal with the intimate, the infinite with the finite, and dreams with reality, in a constant quest for the human essence.

The feature film was screened at the 37th Turin Film Festival.