Synopsis

Karl, an Austrian astronomer, professor, and museum consultant, is at a crossroads in life and work. At 70, he finds his jobs at risk and his physicist wife distancing. He and a colleague, Sarah, also struggle with environmental crises reshaping their fields. Sarah, who specializes in “citizen-science,” has begun seeing Mateo, a young Ecuadorian astronomer who brings her to an old telescope in New Jersey, the site of an astonishing discovery about the origin of the universe. Karl revisits the Rosetta Mission, which landed a probe on a very distant comet. His wife, Eleanor, reflects on her attempt to witness a total eclipse in the American South and its unexpected political implications.

As thoughts about science and fascism, his grandson’s future, and his own role as a dark sky advocate spin above Karl’s head, he finds himself increasingly unmoored. After a conference in Greece, he decides not to return home and heads for a small island in hopes of finding a dark enough sky to reconnect with the stars. Abandoned at a remote mountain trail, he ascends and waits for darkness to fall.

Cohen’s feature-length films include MUSEUM HOURS (Locarno premiere, theatrical opening in 125 U.S. cities, Cinema Eye Award), COUNTING, CHAIN, and BENJAMIN SMOKE – all Berlinale premieres, INSTRUMENT (Rotterdam premiere), and WORLD WITHOUT END (Sundance). Shorts include LOST BOOK FOUND, LITTLE FLAGS, and ANNE TURITT – WORKING.

Over 30 of his films are in the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, with others held by The Whitney Museum, Jewish Museum, and D.C.’s Natl. Gallery of Art. They have been broadcast by ZDF/Arte, PBS, and the Sundance Channel. He has had retrospectives at Harvard Film Archive, London’s Whitechapel Gallery, Indielisboa, BAFICI, Oberhausen, Gijon, and Punto de Vista Film Festivals.

His multi-media show with live music, WE HAVE AN ANCHOR, was a main stage production in the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave series, and London’s Barbican. His show of projections with live soundtracks, GRAVITY HILL SOUND+IMAGE, was presented in Istanbul, Porto, NYC, Nantes, and Knoxville, TN. Jem’s work has been supported by organizations including Sundance Art of Nonfiction, the Guggenheim, Alpert, and Creative Capital Foundations, and New York Foundation for the Arts. Awards include the Independent Spirit Award and San Francisco Film Society’s Persistence of Vision Award. Cohen has had residencies at Macdowell and Yaddo.