Little, Big, and Far – 2026

Thursday, April 16, 5:00 PM
Saturday, April 18, 1:00 PM

Little, Big, and Far
Director: Jem Cohen, Documentary, Austria, USA, 122 min
Karl, an Austrian astronomer, professor, and museum consultant, is at a crossroads in life and work. At 70, he finds his jobs at risk and his physicist wife distancing. He and a colleague, Sarah, also struggle with environmental crises reshaping their fields. Sarah, who specializes in “citizen-science,” has begun seeing Mateo, a young Ecuadorian astronomer who brings her to an old telescope in New Jersey, the site of an astonishing discovery about the origin of the universe. Karl revisits the Rosetta Mission, which landed a probe on a very distant comet. His wife, Eleanor, reflects on her attempt to witness a total eclipse in the American South and its unexpected political implications. As thoughts about science and fascism, his grandson’s future, and his own role as a dark sky advocate spin above Karl’s head, he finds himself increasingly unmoored. After a conference in Greece, he decides not to return home and heads for a small island in hopes of finding a dark enough sky to reconnect with the stars. Abandoned at a remote mountain trail, he ascends and waits for darkness to fall.