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Articles by Sonia Epstein
Brain Injury Increases Risk of Cardiovascular Disease
At a glance: Traumatic brain injury is under-recognized as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Increased risk of cardiovascular and cognitive dysfunction likely important drivers of high levels of disability and early death in people with TBI. Screening and preventative care may lessen this harm. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of long-term disability and premature death, especially among military personnel and those playing contact sports.
Sloan Science & Film
Listening to Women: DEAD RINGERS Consultant Erin Guerriero By Sonia Shechet Epstein | May 12, 2023 The new Prime Video miniseries series DEAD RINGERS was adapted from the David Cronenberg film of the same name and the 1977 novel Twins by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland. In the series, Rachel Weisz stars as twin gynecologists who, jaded with the American hospital system, raise funds to start their own birthing center.
Sloan Science & Film
Bill McKibben on EXTRAPOLATIONS By Sonia Shechet Epstein | March 28, 2023 EXTRAPOLATIONS is a new eight-part series on Apple TV+ that is set is in the near future, between 2037 and 2070, as global temperatures have continued to rise. Elephants and countless non-human animals have gone extinct, fires and floods are common occurrences, the North Pole is being developed now that the glaciers have melted, and generally it's clear that capitalism and society's inability to change are at fault.
Sloan Science & Film
Director Interview: And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine By Sonia Shechet Epstein | February 6, 2023 Filmmakers Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck’s debut feature documentary AND THE KING SAID, WHAT A FANTASTIC MACHINE cuts through the history of the moving image to examine how people have looked at themselves and the social consequences of that obsession over time.
Sloan Science & Film
Made By Human: Sophie Barthes on THE POD GENERATION By Sonia Shechet Epstein | January 30, 2023 Winner of the 2023 Sloan Feature Film Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, Sophie Barthes’s THE POD GENERATION stars Emilia Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor as a couple grappling with the implications of having a baby born out of an artificial pod.
Sloan Science & Film
Top Science Films and TV Shows in 2022 By Sonia Shechet Epstein | December 23, 2022 It is that time of year—best of lists for everything from wine to videogames. So, here we are with our top five science-based films and televisions shows release in the U.S. in 2022. Best Science Films of 2022: CRIMES OF THE FUTURE: Humans have evolved to digest plastic, an incredible premise the king of body horror takes on in his own weird way—humorous, gross, and sexy.
Sloan Science & Film
Science at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival By Sonia Shechet Epstein | December 8, 2022 The 2023 Sundance Film Festival, which will take place in Park City, Utah from January 19-29 and online January 24-29, will include 18 feature-length science or technology-related films out of the 99 in the full slate. These 18 films include documentaries and narrative works dealing with such varied topics as endangered species, pollution, climate change, film technology, and fertility.
Sloan Science & Film
Clive Oppenheimer on Film, Volcanos, and Katia and Maurice Krafft By Sonia Shechet Epstein | November 9, 2022 Clive Oppenheimer, Professor of Volcanology at the University of Cambridge, has been instrumental to a number of films with volcanos, most recently two that incorporate the archive of married volcanologists Maurice and Katia Krafft: Sara Dosa’s FIRE OF LOVE and Werner Herzog’s THE FIRE WITHIN: REQUIEM FOR KATIA AND MAURICE KRAFFT, which recently made its New York City premiere at DOC...
Sloan Science & Film
Director Interview: Ryan White on GOOD NIGHT OPPY By Sonia Shechet Epstein | October 31, 2022 Inspired visual effects tell the true story of NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity—“Oppy”—who embarked on a 90-day mission to Mars in 2004 only to last years. Ryan White’s documentary GOOD NIGHT OPPY recreates their mission, including interviews with the passionate scientists who kept contact with the rovers for so long.
Sloan Science & Film
Director Interview: ALL THAT BREATHES By Sonia Shechet Epstein | October 27, 2022 ALL THAT BREATHES, set in New Delhi, is a documentary following two Muslim brothers who have formed a unique kinship with black kite birds by creating a makeshift care facility for injured kites. Other Indian animal hospitals refuse to take in the birds because they are carnivorous—they eat meat, which the majority Hindu population in India does not.
Sloan Science & Film
Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor on DE HUMANI CORPORIS FABRICA By Sonia Shechet Epstein | October 12, 2022 The stunning new documentary from the filmmakers of LEVIATHAN, Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, DE HUMANI CORPORIS FABRICA goes inside 43 Parisian public hospitals, inside the bodies of its patients, embedding within surgeries to give viewers an almost transgressive encounter with the corporeal.
Sloan Science & Film
Gabriela Cowperthwaite and Nate Halverson on The Grab By Sonia Shechet Epstein | September 27, 2022 BLACKFISH director Gabriela Cowperthwaite teams up with journalist Nate Halverson from the Center for Investigative Reporting for her latest film, THE GRAB, which made its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival.
Sloan Science & Film
Director Interview: Chie Hayakawa’s Plan 75 By Sonia Shechet Epstein | September 23, 2022 Japan’s entry for the Academy Awards is Chie Hayakawa’s debut feature PLAN 75, which made its world premiere at Cannes. Set in a near-future Japan, the film follows the daily lives of a few individuals who are distinctly affected by a government program of assisted dying for those aged 75 and older. PLAN 75 stars Chieko Baishō, Hayato Isomura, Yuumi Kawai, Taka Takao, and Stefanie Arianne.
Sloan Science & Film
Filmmaker Interview: How to Blow Up a Pipeline By Sonia Shechet Epstein | September 20, 2022 Daniel Goldhaber’s eco-thriller HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE, which made a splash at its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and was picked up by NEON, follows a crew of environmental activists who band together to sabotage the track of a critical oil pipeline in Texas. The film was inspired by the 2021 non-fiction book of the same name by Andreas Malm.
Sloan Science & Film
Director Interview: Sophie Jarvis on Until Branches Bend By Sonia Shechet Epstein | September 16, 2022 Making its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Sophie Jarvis’s debut feature UNTIL BRANCHES BEND follows a peach cannery employee named Robin (Grace Glowicki) who discovers a beetle she fears could be a threat to the supply chain. However, her attempts to sound the alarm are quashed by the men in charge, including her boss (Lochlyn Munro).
Sloan Science & Film
Science Consultant Melanie Windridge on THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH By Sonia Shechet Epstein | July 20, 2022 Showtime’s Emmy Award-nominated series THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as an alien who arrives in New Mexico with a mission to save his species. To do so, he must convince a cold fusion expert named Justin Falls (Naomie Harris) to help him build a quantum fusion energy source.
Sloan Science & Film
Director Interview: Mounia Akl on COSTA BRAVA, LEBANON By Sonia Shechet Epstein | July 12, 2022 Mounia Akl’s directorial debut COSTA BRAVA, LEBANON portrays a multi-generational family—the Badris—who live in the mountains outside of Beirut to escape the city’s pollution and social unrest. Inspired by the garbage crisis in Lebanon that began in 2015, Akl’s film delves into the complexity a new landfill brings to the Badris when construction starts outside their peaceful home.
Sloan Science & Film
A Volcanic Love Story: Sara Dosa on FIRE OF LOVE By Sonia Shechet Epstein | June 30, 2022 The award-winning archival documentary FIRE OF LOVE tells the story of married volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, who traveled around the world studying and classifying different types of volcanos, often using film as a research tool. It is narrated by Miranda July.
Sloan Science & Film
Mali Elfman's Ghost Universe: Next Exit By Sonia Shechet Epstein | June 14, 2022 Making its world premiere in the Narrative Competition of the 2022 Tribeca Festival, NEXT EXIT is set in a world that believes in ghosts. Researcher Dr. Stevenson (Karen Gillan) is recruiting volunteers for a study that in which they “pass over” to the ghost realm. The film follows two volunteers, Rose (Katie Parker) and Teddy (Rahul Kohli) who bond on their journey to the clinic.
Sloan Science & Film
Director Interview: Jacquelyn Mills on GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE By Sonia Shechet Epstein | June 9, 2022 The multiple prize-winning documentary GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE is an embedded portrait of researcher Zoe Lucas and her life on the 20-mile-long Sable Island, which she has taken care of and lived since 1971. The changes on Sable Island, which Lucas methodically tracks, serve as a bellwether for the condition of the North Atlantic Ocean. The film is Jacquelyn Mills’s debut feature-length work.
Sloan Science & Film
Writer Anna Symon on The Essex Serpent By Sonia Shechet Epstein | May 31, 2022 THE ESSEX SERPENT is a new limited series on Apple TV+, starring Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston, that is set in 1890s England where a widow named Cora Seaborne (Danes) who is devoted to paleontology moves to the village of Essex to investigate a mythic serpent the town says is terrorizing them. She theorizes it might be a real creature evidence of which she might find in the fossil record.
Sloan Science & Film
Director Interview: Jane Schoenbrun on We're All Going To The World's Fair By Sonia Shechet Epstein | April 21, 2022 Jane Schoenbrun's debut feature film WE'RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD'S FAIR is an intimate yet mediated portrait of of a teenage girl (Anna Cobb) as she searches for herself, and others, through the portal of a web-based horror, role-playing game.
Sloan Science & Film
Gagarine: Interview with Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh By Sonia Shechet Epstein | April 4, 2022 The acclaimed debut feature by Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh, GAGARINE, is set in a real housing development called Cité Gagarine built in the 1960s outside of Paris which housed mainly immigrant families. The building was named for the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space.
Sloan Science & Film
DES Daughter Caitlin McCarthy on Wonder Drug By Sonia Shechet Epstein | March 15, 2022 Based on a true story, the feature screenplay WONDER DRUG is now entering pre-production 15 years after it received support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s screenplay development program at the Hamptons International Film Festival.
Sloan Science & Film
Happiness in VRChat: Joe Hunting on We Met in Virtual Reality By Sonia Shechet Epstein | February 24, 2022 Joe Hunting’s debut feature documentary WE MET IN VIRTUAL REALITY was made while he was an avatar inside of the social platform VRChat.
Sloan Science & Film
Living with Disasters: Economist Sonali Deraniyagala Considers WOMAN IN THE DUNES By Sonia Shechet Epstein | February 9, 2022 Hiroshi Teshighara’s landmark Japanese New Wave film WOMAN IN THE DUNES (1964) follows an entomologist as he travels to a beach outside Tokyo and ends up trapped by the townspeople at the bottom of a sand dune with a young widow. Prisoners, the two must constantly shovel sand to stave of both their own and the town’s annihilation.
Sloan Science & Film
Roland Emmerich on Moonfall and Disaster Movies By Sonia Shechet Epstein | February 4, 2022 Roland Emmerich is the king of disaster movies. From INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996) to GODZILLA (1998) to THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004), the world has been threatened in numerous ways. In his new epic MOONFALL, the Moon has left its planetary orbit and is heading for Earth.
Sloan Science & Film
Surviving Together: Mika McKinnon on Moonfall By Sonia Shechet Epstein | February 3, 2022 MOONFALL, the newest disaster film by INDEPENDENCE DAY director Roland Emmerich, takes place over the course of three weeks when two astronauts (Patrick Wilson and Halle Berry) need to work with a conspiracy theorist (John Bradley) to stop the Moon from colliding with Earth. Meanwhile, they uncover that the Moon is not the planet they thought it was.
Sloan Science & Film
The Dystopian and Utopian of TikTok in TikTok, Boom. By Sonia Shechet Epstein | January 27, 2022 TIKTOK, BOOM., making its world premiere in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, examines the highly influential social media platform TikTok. The film features influencers whose lives have been changed by the platform, as well as people speaking on issues of cybersecurity, global politics, and algorithmic biases.
Sloan Science & Film
Director Interview: Kogonada on After Yang By Sonia Shechet Epstein | January 25, 2022 AFTER YANG, a new near-future film, stars Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja as a family coming to terms with the loss of their technosapien family member, the android Yang (played by Justin H. Min), purchased to be a Chinese brother for their adopted daughter.
Sloan Science & Film
Dorothy Fortenberry on Climate Storytelling By Sonia Shechet Epstein | January 20, 2022 Dorothy Fortenberry is an accomplished playwright and screenwriter who has been invested in scientific themes, particularly climate change, throughout her career. Most recently, she was a writer and producer on the first four season of Hulu’s award-winning adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, and is an executive producer on Apple TV+’s new anthology series EXTRAPOLATIONS, directed by Scott Z.
Sloan Science & Film
Iuli Gerbase on The Pink Cloud By Sonia Shechet Epstein | January 10, 2022 Iuli Gerbase's debut feature THE PINK CLOUD is set in an eerily familiar Brazil in which a toxic pink cloud forces the world to isolate indoors. The film follows two people who end up trapped together following a one-night stand. We spoke with writer/director Iuli Gerbase almost a year into the COVID pandemic, in January 2021 when the film premiered at Sundance.
Sloan Science & Film
Director Interview: The Velvet Queen By Sonia Shechet Epstein | December 21, 2021 THE VELVET QUEEN, a documentary premiering in the U.S. at Film Forum on December 22, follows novelist Sylvain Tesson (In the Forests of Siberia) and wildlife photographer Vincent Munier in the high-altitude mountains of Tibet where they search for the elusive, native snow leopard.
Sloan Science & Film
Francesca Panetta and Halsey Burgund on Deepfakes By Sonia Shechet Epstein | December 17, 2021 On view at Museum of the Moving Image from December 18, 2021 through May 15, 2022, Deepfake: Unstable Evidence on Screen is an exhibition exploring the historical and contemporary implications of misinformation conveyed by moving image media.
Sloan Science & Film
Sundance Sloan Feature Film Winner and Program By Sonia Shechet Epstein | December 14, 2021 The 2022 Sundance Film Festival, taking place online and in person from January 20-30, boasts a slate that includes 19 science or technology-related works. Our selection is below, with descriptions quoted from the Festival’s program. Among these works is the winner of the 2022 Sloan Feature Film Prize, AFTER YANG, which had its world premiere at Cannes 2021. Stay tuned for coverage of the Festival.
Sloan Science & Film
Michael Bilandic's COVID Comedy: Project Space 13 By Sonia Shechet Epstein | December 8, 2021 PROJECT SPACE 13, a new satire by Michael Bilandic premiering on MUBI on December 10, takes place over the course of one night in an art gallery in lower Manhattan during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sloan Science & Film
Kelly Souders on The Hot Zone: Anthrax By Sonia Shechet Epstein | December 6, 2021 The second season of National Geographic’s scripted anthology series THE HOT ZONE, which premiered in 2019 with a season about the Ebola outbreak, is based on the true story of the investigation into the mailer of the Anthrax letters sent around the U.S. weeks after 9/11. Starring Daniel Dae Kim as FBI Special Agent Matthew Ryker and Tony Goldwyn as suspect Bruce Ivins, the new season is now streaming on Hulu.
Sloan Science & Film
Daniel Dae Kim on Playing Agent Ryker in The Hot Zone By Sonia Shechet Epstein | November 28, 2021 Based on the true story of the search for the mailer of anthrax letters sent to journalists and politicians following 9/11, THE HOT ZONE: ANTHRAX premiers over three nights on National Geographic starting November 28.
Sloan Science & Film
Artificial Gamer: Humans vs. The Bot By Sonia Shechet Epstein | November 16, 2021 The new documentary ARTIFICIAL GAMER, directed by Chad Herschberger and produced by Jenny 8. Lee, Cathy Trekloff, and Kerry Deignan Roy, portrays the latest challenge in the history of faceoffs between humans and machines: a multiplayer online battle game called Dota 2. The film follows members of a research company called OpenAI as they develop an A.I. system that can compete with world champions of the game.
Sloan Science & Film
A Race to the Bottom: Shannon Walsh on The Gig is Up By Sonia Shechet Epstein | November 12, 2021 Canadian filmmaker Shannon Walsh’s THE GIG IS UP: A VERY HUMAN TECH DOC, which made its world premiere at CPH: DOX and is making its New York premiere at DOC NYC on November 13, investigates the daily lives making possible the $5 trillion global gig economy.
Sloan Science & Film
Climate Refugees: Newtok By Sonia Shechet Epstein | November 10, 2021 Making its world premiere at DOC NYC on November 13, NEWTOK follows members of an Indigenous village in Alaska whose home is eroding due to melting permafrost, river erosion, and floods.
Sloan Science & Film
Pablo Weber on Homage to the Work of Philip Henry Gosse By Sonia Shechet Epstein | October 26, 2021 Pablo Martin Weber’s 22-minute associative essay film HOMAGE TO THE WORK OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE questions the way technology mediates the human gaze. Weber culls from images taken by NASA’s Mars rover, those created by ISIS, and illustrations by 19th century naturalist and science communicator Philip Henry Gosse, who tried to reconcile the Biblical account of Earth with geological observations.
Insulin and your body on carbs, in real time
Researchers found that insulin may contribute to metabolic distress when cells must process a large amount of carbohydrates. iStock By Sonia Epstein BWH Communications/The Harvard Gazette A high body mass index (BMI) is closely correlated with insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes. For decades, nutrition guidelines have emphasized the necessity of decreasing intake of dietary fats.
Sloan Science & Film
Liz Garbus on Becoming Cousteau By Sonia Shechet Epstein | October 14, 2021 BECOMING COUSTEAU, the latest documentary by two-time Oscar nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus (WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE?), explores the life and career of Jacques-Yves Cousteau.
Sloan Science & Film
E. Chai Vasarhelyi & Jimmy Chin: The Details of The Rescue By Sonia Shechet Epstein | October 8, 2021 THE RESCUE is a remarkable new documentary by the Academy Award-winning director/producer team Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin who made FREE SOLO.
Sloan Science & Film
Gaspar Noé on Vortex By Sonia Shechet Epstein | October 4, 2021 Gaspar Noé’s (ENTER THE VOID, CLIMAX) new film VORTEX tells the story of a couple whose ability to care for one another becomes compromised as they age and one develops dementia. Starring Françoise Lebrun (THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE), Dario Argento (writer, SUSPIRIA), and Alex Lutz (GUY) as their son, the film is primarily presented in split screen.
Sloan Science & Film
NYFF: All of Your Stars Are but Dust on My Shoes By Sonia Shechet Epstein | September 29, 2021 Presented in the Currents section of the New York Film Festival, artist Haig Aivazian’s 18-minute film ALL OF YOUR STARS ARE BUT DUST ON MY SHOES explores the history of how the presence and absence of light has been used to exert control by institutions of biopower. We spoke with Aivazian from the Beirut Art Center, where he is the Artistic Co-Director, about the film’s themes and his process.
Sloan Science & Film
Director Interview: Juanjo Giménez on Out of Sync By Sonia Shechet Epstein | September 27, 2021 The new feature film OUT OF SYNC, directed by Spanish filmmaker Juanjo Giménez, follows a sound designer and foley artist (Marta Nieto) whose hearing suddenly starts falling out of sync with reality. She hears everything with an increasing delay, an state that morphs from affliction to something closer to a superpower as the film progresses.
Sloan Science & Film
Maria Schrader's I'm Your Man: Dan Stevens on Being a Robot By Sonia Shechet Epstein | September 20, 2021 I’M YOUR MAN is the new film written and directed German actress, writer, and director Maria Schrader (UNORTHODOX, DEUTSCHLAND 83). Maren Eggert stars as a scientist tasked with living for three weeks with a robotically engineered life partner named Tom (Dan Stevens) to evaluate the ethics of robots as romantic partners.
Sloan Science & Film
Science Films at NYFF59 By Sonia Shechet Epstein | September 1, 2021 The 59th Annual New York Film Festival (NYFF), set to take place September 24-October 10 at Film at Lincoln Center as well as locations around the city, includes 18 science or technology-related short and feature-length films in its lineup. Those films are listed below, with descriptions quoted from festival programmers.
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