Synopsis

What would happen if plants developed defense mechanisms akin to thorns or poison in response to human actions? Thorn:404 imagines a speculative world where plants have learned to hack our phones, computers, and cinema screens, plunging us into a comatose state. With a touch of irony, the film poetically continues and questions the tradition of disaster fictions that portray plants rising against humans.

Context

Rooted in on-site research around Kino Central in Berlin, the film stems from an investigation into the various plant species inhabiting the surrounding passages and urban spaces. This project was part of the OnSite residency and Festival 2025 organized by the PO:ERA collective. This initiative brings together interdisciplinary practitioners around an artistic action, aiming to explore the material, imaginary, and living dimensions of a space to reveal its history and future prospects, or to create sensory and deep encounters with its inhabitants, human and non-human.

As the cinema’s immediate environment, the passages often produce a quiet ritual among spectators: wandering and strolling before or after the screening. The site-specific effect of the film lies in its potential to transform the spectators’ gaze upon these plants during this ritual, or simply to make them visible in their own right as beings endowed with agency, not merely as decorative elements.

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