SFFILM selected the film BlackBerry from co-writer and director Matthew Johnson as the 2023 recipient of the SFFILM Sloan Science on Screen Prize, an award that celebrates the compelling depiction of scientific themes or characters in a narrative feature film.
Presented through a partnership between SFFILM and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, this annual award carries a $5,000 cash prize and highlights special achievement in rendering the worlds of science and technology through the language of film. The program includes a conversation featuring the film’s creators and experts in the scientific fields being depicted. The Foundation also awards an annual Science in Cinema Award in partnership with SFFILM as part of the institution’s year-round programming through the Science in Cinema Initiative. Previous films honored through the Science in Cinema Initiative include Colin West’s Linoleum (2022), Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up (2021), Francis Lee’s Ammonite (2020), Tom Harper’s The Aeronauts (2019), Damien Chazelle’s First Man (2018), Theodore Melfi’s Hidden Figures (2017), and Ridley Scott’s The Martian (2016).
BlackBerry starring Jay Baruchel, Cary Elwes, Michael Ironside, and Rich Sommer tells the story of the rise and fall of the world’s first mass market smart device. Johnson’s film perfectly captures the heady creative period of the mid-’90s as groups of nerdy engineers and innovators gorging on snacks and sci-fi flicks intersect with the high-powered and demanding world of financiers and venture capitalists.
As a bonus for Festival audiences, the program also features a Sloan Science on Screen title, Sundance favorite The Pod Generation from writer and director Sophie Barthes and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Emilia Clarke.
Sloan Science on Screen Prize: “BlackBerry”
Matthew Johnson (USA 2023, 123 min)
CALIFORNIA PREMIERE
“The person who puts a computer inside a phone will change the world,” proclaims company founder Mike Lazaridis (impeccably played by Jay Baruchel) in Matthew Johnson’s exuberant depiction of the rise and fall of BlackBerry. The film begins in 1996 with the founding of a small Canadian company focused on using quantum science to provide secure communications and mobile productivity resulting in the launch of a handheld device that soon took the world by storm … until competitors took the technology one step further. Johnson’s film perfectly captures the heady creative period of the mid-’90s as groups of nerdy engineers and innovators gorging on snacks and sci-fi flicks intersect with the high-powered and demanding world of financiers and venture capitalists. The terrific supporting cast includes Cary Elwes, Michael Ironside, and Rich Sommer. Expected Guests: Co-writer and Director Matthew Johnson, and panelist Joel Moore, physicist at UC Berkeley.
Sloan Science on Screen: “The Pod Generation”
Sophie Barthes (Belgium/France 2023, 109 min)
CALIFORNIA PREMIERE
Rachel (Emilia Clarke) and Alvy (Chiwetel Ejiofor) live a comfortable lifestyle in New York City in this satiric blend of sci-fi and social commentary set in the near future. While Rachel has a corporate job at a company that makes AI assistants, Alvy works from their upscale apartment studying plants as a botanist. The couple want to have a child but pregnancy might impede Rachel’s prospects for promotion. Her employer has a solution to the dilemma in a new biotech breakthrough, a portable artificial womb in which the fetus can incubate. Experiencing impending parenthood at a remove tests the relationship between husband and wife as well as their connection to their “pod baby.” Writer/director Sophie Barthes presents a striking, darkly funny critique of the effects of capitalism and technology on the family. Expected Guests: Director Sophia Barthes, and moderator Glenn Kiser.