Monday’s “The Big Conversation: From Fire to Flight: Humans, Technology and Time” panel at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival Cinema Café ignited a great discussion that was anchored in Andrew Stanton’s premiere, “In the Blink of an Eye.”
The film, which was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, follows stories from three timelines — prehistoric, present and 200 years into the future — which converge through emotions, philosophies and humanity.
“The film is a triptych, and it’s how we’re all connected,” said the Academy Award-nominated Stanton, who was joined by award-winning director and producer Colby Day, who wrote the film’s screenplay. “What I always say is that John Lennon quote, ‘Life’s what happens while you’re busy making other plans’ and how the small, seemingly in-between moments actually, collectively bridge us to continuing on.”
Day said the film’s underlying theme is time.
“(It’s about) what matters to us during the time that we have,” he said. “I think the feeling of, ‘Is time slipping away from me?’ or, ‘Am I losing my connection with both the past and future?’ is the ‘what’ (that) starts to connect the stories.”
Day, known for writing Johan Renck’s 2024 Netflix film, “Spaceman,” had been working on the film for “ages.”
“I have always been interested in stories about time,” he said. “It’s our most precious commodity. It’s something that is not easy to dramatize. So, I’m grateful to Andrew for figuring it out.”
The script’s “big ideas” attracted Stanton.
“It’s so wide thinking,” he said. “We knew when we were trying to get this movie made everybody would think it’s an expensive film, but it’s not. It’s varied chamber pieces through time, and it shows you the weight you carry.”
The panel, which was moderated by Dr. Heather Berlin — a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and associate clinical professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Mount Sinai Hospital — also featured two scientists:
- Dr. Ariel Ekblaw, founder and CEO of Aurelia Institute and general partner of Aurelia Foundry Fund, a tech fund working to advance humanity’s future in space.
- Dr. Denise Su, an Arizona State University paleoecologist and professor, who specializes in the environments of early human ancestors.
Ekblaw liked the fact that “In the Blink of an Eye” wasn’t a gloomy film about technology taking over.
“Most often the narratives we hear in science fiction are dystopian or the humans have profoundly changed into a cyborg type of existence,” she said. “I think this (film) was a rigorous, thoughtful and tender depiction of what it takes for humanity to become and thrive as a space-faring species. What the film did so beautifully is show that we bring all of our human foibles into space. And it was so tender.”
Su, on the other hand, was drawn to the film’s depiction of the past.
“There is always more to find out,” she said when Berlin asked her about her field of research. “That’s kind of the cool thing about studying the past. You don’t know what you’re going to discover.”
Sometimes these discoveries can be flawed, due to various reasons.
“We all have these narratives of what we assume about what happened in the past, because of our own conceptions of the world today, so the beauty of science, to me, is that it’s a process,” she said. “It’s a process of understanding the world. It’s the process of understanding how we are engaging the world.”
Su connected with how the film portrayed a Neanderthal family as intelligent and familial.
“(In history) the Neanderthals got the short end of the stick,” she said. “To call somebody a ‘Neanderthal’ is an insult, and that very much spawned from the very first skeleton that had been found.”
The skeleton’s reconstruction depicted the Neanderthal as a “decrepit being who hunched forward and couldn’t stand straight,” Su said.
“Therefore we had the concept of it being very dumb and living in caves,” she said.
As it turned out, the skeleton was of an old and diseased individual, Su said.
“Over the past 100 years, we have found out more and more about Neanderthals and realized they were this incredibly intelligent species,” she said. “They survived for well over 100,000 years. They had technology. They had art and culture, and there is a little bit of Neanderthal in all of us, (because) we are our past. All of us carry DNA from our past, (but sometimes) we tend to forget these were once living, breathing beings with desires, wants and motivations.”
Casting the Neanderthal characters proved to be a challenge, Stanton said.
“Every casting agency sent us Fred Flintstones and Arnold Schwartzeneggers who did this, ‘Ungh, Ugh,’ thing, and it was all wrong,” he said. “(Neanderthals) have been fighting for food every five minutes of their entire lives, so they’ve got to be scrawny, stringy and scarred up.”
When actor Jorge Vargas showed up, Stanton and Day knew they had their man.
“(He) literally looked like he hadn’t eaten in weeks, and he had all of these scars,” Stanton said.
“He was also a stunt performer, so he was a physical guy,” Day said.
One of the issues “In the Blink of an Eye” addresses is long-term separation from others during space travel, and Ekblaw shed light on the physical and psychological research NASA does in that field.
“There are limiting factors in long-duration space travel — not just with life support, but psychology of isolation,” she said. “NASA spends a lot of time thinking about how to pair people together in space. There’s a huge argument about pro- or anti-married couples because they would absolutely destroy the mission or make the mission. So, there’s a real depth of psychological analysis of what types of minds are appropriate for a very extended, isolated mission.”
Su added that humans are primates, and all primates are social.
“For any success in the future, we actually do need that social companionship,” she said. “It’s just how we function. Isolated individuals do not do well. We need mental, psychological, emotional, physical connections with each other. So in the future, (with) these space flights that take decades or longer it’s going to be incredibly important to have these kinds of companionships. Otherwise it wouldn’t be healthy. Maybe that’s why we do have some of the issues we have in society today. We’re losing these really vital connections with each other.”
Ekblaw said the living quarters on these journeys will also make a difference.
“In the work I do as a space architect, I design space stations,” she said. “I’m designing the next generation of the International Space Station, so more of you in the audience could, in the next five to 10 years, go to space for a weekend if you wanted to. We are thinking now about how to design the interior of a space station, but also the teaming with the selection of people who get to go. So it (will be) a life worth living in space.”
Stanton, who co-wrote and directed “Finding Nemo,” “WALL•E” and “A Bug’s Life” for Pixar and Walt Disney Pictures, stopped the discussion at one point to make an observation.
“It’s so frustrating to be on this panel because how did we not find these two when we were making this picture,” he said about Su and Ekblaw.
“We did this in the wrong order,” Day concurred with a laugh.
Monday’s discussion started with a few words from Doron Weber, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation vice president and program director, who set the tone.
“The Sloan Foundation is a New York-based nonprofit founded in 1984 that provides grants for high-quality and partial research for science, technology, engineering, math and economics,” he said. “We also make grants to fortify and strengthen the scientific workforce of scientific institutes, as you know that are under attack right now.”
In addition, the foundation hosts events, creates programming and backs artistic projects that emphasizes public understanding and engagement through science.
Recent projects include Christopher Nolan’s 2024 Academy Award-winning biopic, “Oppenheimer,” and Jonathan Spector’s Tony Award-winning play, “Eureka Day,” which satirizes modern-day debates about vaccinations.
“It’s that last branch that today’s event is part of,” Weber said.
‘In the Blink of an Eye’ in-person screenings
- 8:30 a.m., Jan. 31, The Ray Theatre, Park City
- 5:30 p.m., Feb. 1, Broadway Centre Cinemas – 3, Salt Lake City
- Web: festival.sundance.org.