Cosmographies (2024)

Plot Summary

Maori astrobiologist Xuê Noon (Victoria Hunt) finds solace in Mars in 2051 as a leader from the Aotearoa Space Agency on an international scientific mission, following the discovery of dormant microorganisms by the NASA Mars Sample Return Mission in 2039. Xuê wanders across this sentient planet and reflects on the newly found lifeforms as she grows plants in a glasshouse. Through the spirit of an ancient taniwha, she slipstreams in spacetime to the Atacama Desert in 2023 where she lived as an Indigenous scientist years earlier. In Atacama the film engages with numerous ongoing life-and-death struggles for land and water justice led by Indigenous communities, activists, and scientists in this old, vital yet scarred desert. Through interviews and conversations, the film depicts centuries old and ongoing forms of social injustice and ecological degradation to weave a critical allegory against the renewed commercial impulse of a new space age rampaging in the 2020's.

Full Cast & Characters

Victoria Hunt

Xuê Noon

Adriana Aránguiz

Participant

Jimena Cruz Mamani

Participant

Rudecindo Christian Espíndola

Participant

Félix Galleguillos Aymani

Participant

Edith Parra Espíndola

Participant

José Sánchez

Participant

Camilo Sanzana

Participant

Elizabeth Tejerina

Participant

Millarca Valenzuela

Participant

Flora Vilches

Participant

Waiaria Page Macedone-Hunt

Participant

Director & Crew

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