Phases of Matter

Synopsis

Phases of Matter follows living and inanimate residents of a teaching hospital in Istanbul, moving from the operating room to the morgue, between life and other states, the real and the virtual.

Directors' Biography

Deniz Tortum works in film and new media. His work has screened internationally, including at the Venice Film Festival, IFFR, SxSW, Sheffield, True/False and DokuFest. He has worked as a research assistant at the MIT Open Documentary Lab, where his research focused on virtual reality. In 2017-2018, he was a fellow at Harvard Film Study Center, working on "Phases of Matter", which premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2020. His film "If Only There Were Peace" (co-dir Carmine Grimaldi) received the best short documentary award at DokuFest and his latest VR film "Floodplain" premiered in Venice Film Festival. He was recently featured in Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film.