CHRISTIE PITS FILM FESTIVAL
Sunday, July 16, 2023

Viking

With the short films NASA please pick me up and A Life on Mars

Québécois filmmaker Stéphane Lafleur’s latest feature film, Viking, is an absurdist sci-fi comedy as original as it is charming. Set in the present day, it places a research crew of five civilians into a space shuttle simulator to monitor their behaviour and social interactions, each person selected because their personalities closely resemble those of a crew of real astronauts on a troubled mission to Mars. With interpersonal conflict between crew members (and their doubles back on Earth) threatening to derail the voyage, the future of this world – and the next – may come down to teamwork and community care.

Short film NASA please pick me up is the perfect match for Viking’s absurd plot and offbeat humour. In this animated short, space officer Tim accidentally fell out of the shuttle… a couple of hours ago. Paralyzed by the embarrassment of his mistake, he finally calls in to NASA to get support from Charles at command control.

Local filmmaker Sebastian Ko’s stunning short documentary A Life on Mars is constructed from images and audio of the Mars rover Curiosity, captured from NASA’s open-data project. As hundreds of images, sourced over the course of a decade, are assembled in sequence, Curiosity takes on an almost-human character, a traveller discovering what life might be like on an alien planet.