The Peace Particle
Alex Kiehl / United Kingdom & Wales / 2025 / European Premiere / 86 min
Black holes. The birth of the internet. The potential destruction of the universe. The world's largest scientific experiment at CERN opens a Pandora's box of new discoveries and unforeseen problems.
When scientists at CERN first activated their giant particle accelerator, some people feared that they would create a black hole that would cause the Earth to perish. Instead, it was the site’s IT department that blew up the world as we know it when they invented the Internet. In other words, this is a film about some of the biggest and most revolutionary ideas in our modern history. Told by a delightful and often colorful selection of the scientists who work in the international hive that is CERN.
CERN was founded in the shockwaves after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Science should never again be used to wage war. For 70 years, scientists from the US, Afghanistan, Israel, and Palestine have worked side by side, united in a common search for new truths. But when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, cooperation with Russia stopped immediately. This has shifted the tectonic plates in the world of research, and the film delves deeply into the fundamental question: Should science be above politics? An exemplary science film that really gets the wheels of the mind turning.