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Movies & TV

13th Feb 2017

This new Irish film may be the must-see documentary of 2017

Eoghan Doherty

“Hello from the children of Planet Earth.”

Space.

It’s breathtakingly big, it’s endlessly fascinating, and now it’s the subject of a spectacular-looking, new documentary, The Farthest.

Even more exciting, the film is an Irish-made production and will have its first ever screening at the upcoming Audi Dublin International Film Festival, taking place in The Savoy, Dublin, on Sunday 26 February at 2pm.

Final tickets to see it are available by clicking here.

Written and directed by multi-IFTA-award-winner, Emer Reynolds, The Farthest explores the story of the iconic twin Voyager mission, an incredible NASA project that launched in 1977 and, to this day, continues to travel further than anything from Earth has ever travelled before, 12 billion miles and counting.

Even Vanessa Carlton didn’t think anything could go that far.

Amazingly, the smartphone you’re very likely reading this article on, has 240,000 times more memory stored inside it than the Voyager spacecraft.

Think about that for a second; the device in your hand is more powerful than the vehicle sent by the greatest minds in humankind to potentially make contact with alien beings.*

In addition to the phenomenal fact that Voyager continues to hurtle through the vast eternity of space, the mission is very special for another reason; The Voyager Golden Record.

A time capsule of life on earth, the Voyager Golden Record contains music and greetings from people back on Earth; a message in a bottle that will be used to communicate with the aforementioned aliens, should they ever encounter any…

Speaking to JOE ahead of the upcoming screening of The Farthest on home soil, Reynolds explains, “I wanted to film the story of Voyager because it’s an epic wondrous tale, that amazingly had never been told on a cinema screen before. It has all the elements of any great story: dreams, ambition, daring, tension, danger, exploding stars, colliding galaxies… and aliens! It’s a film for anyone who has looked up at the moon and the twinkling stars, and wondered…”

If you want a chance to see The Farthest in all of its dazzling glory on the big screen, all you have to do is click here to pick up your ADIFF tickets, perfect if you have a longing to understand the significance of our own existence… or if you just want to stuff your face with an offensively large box of popcorn at the cinema.

Four billion years from now, when our sun turns into a Red Giant, Voyager is still going to be flying, through the stars.

You know what that means?

We’ll still be out there too, in the words of Buzz Lightyear, travelling to infinity and beyond.

Enjoy…

Clip via TheFarthest Film

The Farthest screens at the Audi Dublin International Film Festival in The Savoy on Sunday 26 February at 2pm with director, Emer Reynolds, and Voyager Project Manager (1977), John Casani, in attendance.

For more information on The Farthest on Facebook, click here, and for more information on Twitter, click here.

*Unless you’re on your old Nokia 3310, of course. Then it’s more powerful than anything ever made.

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