Past years

The ninth edition took place in March and presented a total of 38 films, 4 exhibitions, 2 workshops, 2 talks, 2 film music concerts and a rich accompanying programme with 19 guests from the Czech Republic and abroad. The theme of the year was extraterrestrial life on planet Earth. The festival focused on the question of life not only in space itself, but also on possible contact with extraterrestrial civilization.

The theme of the 9th year was "Aliens Among Us", so we are leaving the cycle of themes dealing with the near future and returning to the area of pure science fiction. Some of you may have heard of the Drake Equation and the Fermi Paradox. The former is originally a thought experiment from 1961. Physicist Frank Drake created a multivariable equation that implies the probability of humanity encountering extraterrestrials. Unknown at the time were a number of facts that the equation must account for, such as the number of stars in the galaxy, the number of habitable planets, and so on. Today, we have much more accurate data, and while the result is only approximate, one thing is clear - we should see them. There are thousands of planets in our galaxy on which intelligent life could have evolved, had billions of years to do so, but we find no evidence of its existence. And that's the Fermi paradox.There are a number of answers: maybe they're already here, we just can't see them. There could very well be an inactive probe the size of Prague hiding in the asteroid belt, waking up once every million years and then going back to sleep. Or hiding, as fans of Ashtar Sheran or Men in Black would claim. For some it may be an appealing, for others a terrifying idea. The religion of the Pleiadians and many other obscure cults are clear about this - they are here, and when the apocalypse comes, they will take the chosen ones into their ships. The conspirators are also clear - the CIA and KGB have long been studying their corpses and flying saucers and trying to create technology based on theirs. If only they did. So it's clear that aliens on planet Earth are our theme this year; maybe we're just missing them in the infinite universe, or not looking long enough or well enough. After all, the electromagnetic emission bubble around the Earth is some 85 light years in diameter, but contains only a few dozen or hundreds of stars. Perhaps some life forms have successfully destroyed themselves, as we can observe for ourselves, or have decided that colonizing space is highly uneconomical and benefits no one. Either way, perhaps we should be glad. We ourselves are not a good example of being nice to less advanced civilizations. Plus, movies about space invasions are very optimistic. In War of the Worlds or Independence Day, we get invaded by a civilization a few hundred years ahead of us. But in reality, aliens who arrived tens of light years away would be thousands of years ahead of us, and we wouldn't stand a chance. As A. C. Clarke said, "There are two possibilities: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. We would also like to thank our main partners, because without them the festival would not be possible: JRC, Zážitky.cz, Big Shock, Figures.cz, MindMaze Prague, Canon, IS Produkce, SupremeXP, Stardust Production and last but not least Prusa Research. The Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Prague, Brno, Pilsen and the Municipal District of Prague 1. Zdeněk Hřib and the Mayor of the Statutory City of Prague