Deep Soup

We live in a world where digital technology and AI increasingly trap us in our heads. Through screens, our minds are constantly stimulated while our bodies, and the physical world around us, fade into the background. These digital systems promise frictionless perfection, in sharp contrast to our messy, tangible reality.

DEEP SOUP is a participatory short sci-fi film that challenges this imbalance. By turning the tables on technology and AI, it invites viewers and participants to reconnect with the material world. Rewiring perception, it offers a new way of seeing – not people, but matter, movement, and gravity.

In the film post-humanists Luna Maurer and Roel Wouters are developing a physical intelligence model: DEEP SOUP. One that learns from matter, not from data. With humans from all over the planet they have gathered recordings of matter to feed their model.

The soup thickens.

We first online campaign of DEEP SOUP was launched during the Night of the Short Film in September 2025 during the Netherlands Film Festival. The result, the participatory sci-fi short film DEEP SOUP, premieres during IDFA on November 17 in Amsterdam, as part of the competition for Best Digital Storytelling of IDFA Doclab. 

We will now tour the project at film, music festivals and events in the Netherlands, and we’re aiming for distribution internationally. While presenting the project, we would not only like to screen the film, but we would also like to activate new audiences by launching additional online campaigns in close collaboration with festivals and partners. Together we can share a new ‘Call To Action’, asking communities to join us by making their own content, to be creative, to help us feed the soup! Sounds interesting? We would love to hear from you at info@studiobiarritz.nl!

Production details:
Written and directed by Luna Maurer & Roel Wouters
A project initiated by Robin Coops
Country: The Netherlands

Download the press kit here.