On an interstellar journey, a group of scientists studies the last living vestiges of Earth. The artificial intelligence, Museo, becomes a portal to the crew’s diaries and a fragmented archive of humanity. On Earth, the one believed to be the last of the humans traverses a ruined planet that is slowly recovering, little by little, from the apocalypse it endured.
In Leonardo Pirondi’s Tropical Fractals (world premiere at IndieLisboa), the end of the world looms. Planet Earth has fallen into ruin; its inhabitants have fled into outer space in search of something. There is a system, Museo, which opens the doors to the logbooks of a crew on the brink of extinction. And on this devastated Earth, there seems to be a glimmer of hope: a solitary man trying to find traces of something that may have survived, just as he has. In times of climate disasters and unjust wars, this film by Pirondi places us in the limbo of human existence, in our capacity to still create something and not merely destroy. A fable in the form of experimental science fiction, it brings the universe of the director’s short films to the feature-length screen and manages, with limited resources, to create a contemporary version of the end of the world. Should we believe in those who have gone, or in that prophet who remained? The film embraces the prophet, and with him, our capacity to still resist is made possible. Cinema takes many forms, and this one is truly beautiful. (Miguel Valverde)
