Event series
3 + 5 + 10 March 2026
GOETHE FILMS: World on a Wire — Cinema as Quantum Experiment
Film Series
Perhaps more so than in the middle of the Cold War, when Rainer Werner Fassbinder created his sci-fi drama World on a Wire, we find ourselves in a moment that seems volatile as well as highly charged.
Globally converging crises challenge our individual perception, collective sense-making and planetary survival. Reality seems increasingly unstable—digital simulations blur with lived experience, scientific advancements challenge our most basic assumptions about existence, and cinema proves itself to be both radical diagnostic tool and healing practice.
Three genre films from the height of New German Cinema to today offer opportunities to step outside consensus reality, not to escape but to navigate communal uncertainty. In World on a Wire (1973), Fassbinder uses nested simulations to question authentic experience and the human mind itself. The protagonists in Wim Wenders’ epic and gloriously restored sci-fi thriller Until the End of the World (1991) search for connection in a global crisis, with the help of a device that can visualize dreams. Timm Kroeger's metaphysical mystery The Universal Theory (2024) plays out in the shadow of the Alps, where a young physicist attends a scientific congress devoted to the study of quantum mechanics, only to find himself drawn into a spiral of paranoia and conspiracy.
Each film positions the viewer as participant in the construction of alternate worlds. From cosmic perspective to intimate presence, this is cinema as quantum experiment—where the act of observation changes both observer and observed, creating space for new thoughts and dreams (or nightmares).
March 3, 2026, 6.30pm
Film: World on a Wire
March 5, 2026, 6.30pm
Film: Until the End of the World
March 10, 2026, 6.30pm
Film: The Universal Theory
Globally converging crises challenge our individual perception, collective sense-making and planetary survival. Reality seems increasingly unstable—digital simulations blur with lived experience, scientific advancements challenge our most basic assumptions about existence, and cinema proves itself to be both radical diagnostic tool and healing practice.
Three genre films from the height of New German Cinema to today offer opportunities to step outside consensus reality, not to escape but to navigate communal uncertainty. In World on a Wire (1973), Fassbinder uses nested simulations to question authentic experience and the human mind itself. The protagonists in Wim Wenders’ epic and gloriously restored sci-fi thriller Until the End of the World (1991) search for connection in a global crisis, with the help of a device that can visualize dreams. Timm Kroeger's metaphysical mystery The Universal Theory (2024) plays out in the shadow of the Alps, where a young physicist attends a scientific congress devoted to the study of quantum mechanics, only to find himself drawn into a spiral of paranoia and conspiracy.
Each film positions the viewer as participant in the construction of alternate worlds. From cosmic perspective to intimate presence, this is cinema as quantum experiment—where the act of observation changes both observer and observed, creating space for new thoughts and dreams (or nightmares).
March 3, 2026, 6.30pm
Film: World on a Wire
March 5, 2026, 6.30pm
Film: Until the End of the World
March 10, 2026, 6.30pm
Film: The Universal Theory
Events
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GOETHE FILMS: Until the End of the World
Film Screening @TIFF Lightbox | Written by Wim Wenders and Peter Carey, based on an idea by Wenders and Solveig Dommartin
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TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX, Toronto
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With English Subtitles
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GOETHE FILMS: The Universal Theory
Film Screening @TIFF Lightbox | by Timm Kröger, starring Jan Bülow, Olivia Ross, Hanns Zischler, and others
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TIFF Lightbox Toronto, Toronto
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With English Subtitles
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