In the poetic multi-player film Deep Soup, our main character, O,  takes viewers and players on an enchanting journey, in which the world of matter takes on new meaning. Players are challenged in co-creation to capture the physical world with its forces of nature in film. With the central message that the complexity and beauty of our human existence come from the friction and collisions we experience every day.Through co-creation, we break the mantra of social media that mainly encourages individual content production. 

Deep Soup is a poetic multi-player film that pays homage to friction and collision, told from a non-human perspective. The story is told by the main character, named O, a non-human intelligence, who marvels at the natural laws that prevail in the human material world, such as the influence of gravity. O, the main character is formed in the green water-gel-like substance, the deep soup. We see cards with moving images (videos) bubbling up from the green substance. On these cards are short films captured by co-created project participants. Each film shows material objects subject to the force of gravity. We hear O’s thoughts and interpretations on the videos as he interacts with them.

Participants have previously filmed the movements of these objects (with their device’s camera): they fall, roll, bounce, float, and sink in water. Meanwhile, O gives a completely different interpretation of these movements and draws the conclusion that human life (on Earth?) must be very good. Why? Because they live in a state of constant friction, where interaction and dialogue take place. 

In the film, we get to witness how O interacts with the physical world through the soup. This is done through the addition of all kinds of film clips to the soup. O represents a non-material, non-human intelligence-a frictionless world-that interacts with the world of collisions. Deep Soup is the blend of these two worlds. Throughout the film, we follow O’s experience as he studies more and more physical properties related to gravity. However, O interprets the picture in a very different way. His understanding of matter, gravity and the physical world became rather surreal, almost like a hallucination. O creates an image of the world in which it sees beauty, dance and motivation in the collisions and consequences of gravity-a dynamic interplay of forces and forms. Confronting all these examples from the physical world, O develops a strong will towards the end: to join the world of matter.

The story is a celebration of the miraculous interaction between objects and the forces acting on them, with the central message that the complexity and beauty of our human existence come from the friction and collisions we experience every day.

Production details:
Written and directed by Luna Maurer & Roel Wouters
Dramaturgy by Robin Coops
Country: The Netherlands
Running time: variable
Status: in production, expected release in 2025

Mobile phone, co-creation, linear short fiction film