Imagine Science Film Festival

Crisis. Entropy. Extinction. Survival – the theme for the next edition.

The 5th annual edition of Imagine Science Film Festival Abu Dhabi (ISFF) brings four days of feature films, experimental shorts, talks, and an exhibition.

This year, ISFF takes a hard look ahead at the high stakes for all life on an Earth facing climate change, species loss, nuclear proliferation, and the imminent exhaustion of our energy resources. Existence itself is not assured.

But wherever we consider such direly high stakes, we can also aspire to a better world. New technologies constantly open new possibilities and sociopolitical change opens the way for new ideas to take hold. For every dystopia, a corresponding utopia may be within reach. It may be a struggle, but the record of all life is that of an eon-spanning fight to stay alive.

As a city carved out of the desert, Abu Dhabi knows the challenges of human existence in an inhospitable environment, and the ingenuity that allows us to thrive nonetheless. It also knows well the global reliance on the oil it produces. SURVIVAL, here, takes on a sharper image against high temperatures, vital desalination operations, vast but finite resources, and rapid adaptation to changing conditions. Here we may approach, in microcosm, our most vital global questions.

Comprising a film festival, an art exhibition, workshops, gallery talks, discussions, and more, Imagine Science Abu Dhabi brings together cutting-edge science, art, and film from the Gulf, the Middle East, and the world in an international conversation. This year that conversation will include tumultuous natural histories and speculative futures, the deaths of stars and radical life extension, everything that concerns the crucial process of SURVIVAL.

The final program will be announced closer to the event date.