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Memories of the Future

"Memories of the Future" is a cinematic reflection on the growing crisis of space debris, blending science, metaphor, and artistic abstraction. The film is presented from the perspective of a child—a future Earthling—who looks back at humanity’s actions with both wonder and concern. This perspective shapes the visual style: everything is slightly exaggerated, much like a child’s drawing, but rendered in a futuristic way. The satellites appear oversized, the debris fields impossibly dense, and the vastness of space feels surreal. It is a new era of storytelling, where scientific reality meets the boundless imagination of a child.

At the heart of the film is a seemingly insignificant object—a single bolt. It drifts through space, small and unassuming against the backdrop of immense orbital structures. But its presence is deceptive. The bolt represents overlooked dangers, a silent consequence of human negligence. As it moves through the cosmos, it ultimately cracks a camera lens, distorting the view—a metaphorical warning that ignoring a problem does not make it disappear. Like a tiny mistake that spirals into disaster, the bolt embodies the unintended consequences of human actions.

The film’s aesthetic is deeply influenced by classical opera and ballet, using Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, 2nd Movement to transform the slow-motion collision of debris into a haunting "space ballet." The choice of music elevates the visuals, creating a dreamlike yet unsettling atmosphere where beauty and destruction coexist.

By incorporating real audio recordings—Sputnik 1’s signal, abstract radio transmissions, and Earth's magnetic field sounds—the film merges fiction with reality, grounding its imaginative visuals in scientific authenticity. The child’s voice, generated artificially, adds an emotional layer, as if the future is speaking directly to the past.

  • Irina Petrova Adamatzky
    Director
  • Irina Petrova Adamatzky
    Writer
  • Irina Petrova Adamatzky
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    Sci-fi, short, animation
  • Runtime:
    3 minutes 23 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    March 4, 2025
  • Production Budget:
    0 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • First-Time Filmmaker Sessions Volume 3: Official Selection
    Online/Vimeo On Demand
    March 24, 2025
    Official Selection
  • Future World Film Festival: Nominee
    Lisbon
    Portugal
    June 17, 2025
    Nominee
  • The Indie Film Awards (IFA): Official Selection
    Peshawar
    Pakistan
    June 22, 2025
    Official Selection
  • Neuro Masters AI FILM Festival: Official Selection
    Moscow
    Russian Federation
    June 6, 2025
    Official Selection
Director Biography - Irina Petrova Adamatzky

Irina Petrova, a Bristol-based polymath, seamlessly blends photography, art, science, and curation in a career that spans multiple disciplines. She has earned over 330 international photography awards and has showcased her work in more than 70 exhibitions worldwide. Her sculpture Fungal Computer is currently on display at FUTURIUM in Berlin as part of the Treasures of the Future exhibition, where it will remain for five years.

Renowned for her expertise in wildlife micro-photography and visionary science fiction installations, Irina merges organic lifeforms with artificial components, creating thought-provoking imagery. She favors vintage manual focus lenses, adding a timeless quality to her work. Among her many accolades, she has been recognized as the Overall Winner of The Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition 2023, secured 1st place in The Nature Conservancy’s 2023 Global Photo Contest (Reptiles & Amphibians), and was awarded 5th place in the Digital Art category at the Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Award 2023. In 2024, she won 1st prize in the SUGi x NAVA Photo Contest (Natural Diversity), was named Microimaging Runner-Up in The Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition, and received an Honorable Mention in the Nikon Small World in Motion Competition.

Beyond her artistic endeavors, Irina is an ex-committee member of the Royal Photographic Society’s Women in Photography group. She has made significant contributions to the study of non-human cognition, artistic interpretations of science, public engagement, and the philosophy of sentient entities.

Her scientific insights are highlighted in her chapter "Fungal Grey Matter" within Unconventional Computing, Arts and Philosophy (World Scientific, 2022), further establishing her as a pioneer at the intersection of art, science, and philosophy. Additionally, her artwork and photography have been featured as book covers for publications by World Scientific Publishing.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

"Memories of the Future" is a reflection on humanity’s journey into the cosmos, seen through the eyes of a future Earthling. The short film delves into the consequences of our technological advancement, where the beauty of exploration is shadowed by the silent, unnoticed growth of debris surrounding our planet.

In this project, I wanted to explore the delicate balance between innovation and destruction, and the unspoken cost of our curiosity. Through the 3D environment created in Unreal Engine, I sought to visualize a world where satellites, once symbols of progress, have turned into an endless orbit of waste, forming a strange, eerie ring around Earth. The rotating bolt serves as a metaphor for the recurring consequences of our actions—an object of creation now symbolizing a cycle of neglect.

This narrative, told through the perspective of a child, is meant to evoke both wonder and melancholy. The child reflects on a past that’s distant to them, where the Earth they inherit is not one of hope, but of things lost in the void. The final scene, showing a planet composed entirely of satellites with intricate rings around it, is a haunting image of both achievement and its hollow repercussions.

Through this short film, I aim to capture the complexity of space exploration and its unseen aftermath—an ever-expanding debris field that will persist long after we’ve stopped looking. It is a meditation on how we shape the world beyond our atmosphere and the legacy we leave for those who will follow.

Irina Petrova Adamatzky