A cinematic journey across space and time, Aphotic Zone peers back from the future through dark oceans to witness the threats of climate crisis and economic extractivism; the idealistic prospects of science; and the catastrophic consequences of human greed. Luminous sea jellies beam over choirs of fish as we travel 4 km deep past the Pacific seamounts off Costa Rica to reach the pitch black 'aphotic' zone of the sea. At the bottom, an ROV drawn from documentary footage carefully samples deep sea corals with robotic arms until it passes into the digital imaginary of a sharply risen ocean. There, the Duga radar (a Soviet-era missile defense system near Chernobyl) is an undersea ruin far beneath the waves. Both documentary and oneiric, the film moves through a landscape of prehistoric life and advanced technology. Mixed by Oscar-winning sound engineers Jaime Baksht and Michelle Couttolenc, the film's soundtrack is drawn from a field recording made in Mexico City's Zócalo on the 500th anniversary of Spain's conquest of Tenochtitlan. Ecological devastation echoes colonial destruction and the street sounds of CDMX become a ghost warning us of the cataclysms yet to come.
