Maija Blåfield‘s The Fantastic will be screened as part of Scotopia On Screen & Space Project taking place from July 4-22, 2026 in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Scotopia On Screen & Space is an interdisciplinary event combining film screenings, an art exhibition, and a series of three panel discussions exploring the ontology of cinema.

The Fantastic (2020) is a film about encountering the unknown and the relationship between imagination and reality. The film is built on interviews with exiled North Koreans, who describe what they imagined the outside world to be like, based on their experiences of watching smuggled western fiction films. Alternating documentary footage and visual effects, the film raises the question of how reality is defined and what we wish to believe in. The Fantastic reverses the set-up where westerners are peeping in on the everyday life of the closed-off state. In this film, it is the North Koreans who direct their curiosity at the outside world and imagine what life in Western countries is like.

Maija Blåfield (b. 1973) is a multidisciplinary contemporary artist and film director. Her cinematic works navigate the grounds between experimental film and documentary film. In addition, Blåfield also works with photography and writing, among other media. Blåfield’s works typically address the ambiguity of reality, experiencing our everyday life differently, and the human relationship with the environment. Her works have been presented in Finland and internationally, in art museums and galleries, as well as at film festivals and on television. Blåfield was awarded the Finnish state award for media art in 2014 and was nominated for the prestigious Ars Fennica award in 2017.

Scotopia On Screen & Space
July 4-22, 2026
Chiang Mai, Thailand

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