Juan Palmieri

Science-docu-fiction, or a documentary popular science film - that's what the creators described it. The action begins on a spaceship controlled by womens - cartographers from a civilization unknown to us. They are designed to study the planets encountered in space. At some point they reach our Solar System and their sight falls on Earth. Researchers are delving into the nine hundred million years of our planet's development history. Through the eyes of cosmic cartographers, MappaMundi takes its viewer on a greatly accelerated voyage through 950 million years of development on Earth, 150.000 years of human migration and 15.000 years of human cartography. The film visualises the continuous changes taking place in our world, change that is imperceptible over a single human lifetime. MappaMundi is a film about the image of the world that we have repeatedly re-drawn for thousands of years. With over hundred world maps from the past 15.000 years, the development of our view of the world from its beginnings to the present day is analysed and illustrated in all its diversity. MappaMundi shows the world we inhabit as the result of a process of continuous, radical change, a process of incessant transformation - that is both unstoppable and fascinating.

"When the world had had its say, and I did not have a single dream left, I got on the train that happened to pass."

Toorbos explores the feminine, through its fragility and power. This heightened realism drama, set in South Africa's Knysna forest of the 1930's, tells of an initiated forest woman who is coaxed into marriage to a townsman and has to navigate the realities of progress, oppression of society, heavy-handed expectations, love and war to her own personal freedom.