Private Project

Me & My Robot

Each year, students from around the globe compete in the World Robot Olympiad. To claim the coveted championship, they use their engineering skills, Lego ingenuity, and competitive drive to qualify regionally, nationally, and internationally. Me & My Robot follows 18 teams from 10 different countries -- utilizing video diaries from the kids themselves. We see their trials and tribulations as they head to Thailand for the 2018 finals. Not just a story about winners and losers, we witness children from around the world working through the common language of engineering -- harnessing its power to solve the world’s most complex problems.

  • Mark Decena
    Director
  • Laura Marks
    Producer
  • Bridgette Myers
    Producer
  • Liz Decena
    Producer
  • James Redford
    Executive Producer
  • Lawrence Rickford
    Director of Photography
  • Bernardo Josue
    Editor
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Genres:
    Science, Technology, STEM Education, Youth
  • Runtime:
    38 minutes 10 seconds
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Mark Decena

MARK DECENA is a writer, director and producer of award-winning feature films, television programming, web films, and commercials. A three time Sundance alumni, Mark's first feature, Dopamine won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize. Decena’s work spans from narrative features to documentaries, criss crossing various themes from the nature of love to sustainable design, environmental justice to professional stare down.

Mark wrote and directed the Redford Center’s film, Watershed, a one-hour documentary on water use in the Colorado River Basin, executive produced and narrated by Robert Redford. He was also a writer and producer on Stand Up Planet, a Gates funded project looking at global development issues through the lens of stand up comedy. His most recent documentary feature film, Not Without Us, follows seven global grassroots activists as they head to the United Nations climate negotiations in Paris in 2015. It appeared nationally on PBS and is currently in educational distribution.

His short films, both narrative and documentary, have screened in festivals around the world. Mark’s current projects in development include, How We Live, a travel show to the Next Economy, and The Flower and the Bee, a Kenneth Rainen Grant finalist for socially conscious feature length narrative films.

Mark is also the founder of Kontent, a boutique production company based in San Francisco, housing a Kollective of award winning filmmakers, as well as producers and creatives working on original and branded works.

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Director Statement

Robot Love: When filmmaking and passions collide, love ensues. I have collected Tetsujin 28 and Astro Boy toys and memorabilia for decades. Something about a child controlling a giant robot, and a wacky-professor father who creates a robot boy, fascinated me. And also reminded me that play and imagination are a cornerstone of creativity.

Which leads to another fascination: experiential education. I’m a product of it, and a witness to its benefits with my own kids. I am grateful for the opportunity to give it voice through the World Robot Olympiad and the young minds of its participants. This project represents several atoms of my life colliding, and from it, the resulting energy will hopefully reverberate far and wide.