Octopocalypse

Synopsis

What would you do if you met an alien intelligence with power to shape humanity’s future? Three participants enter an interrogation room after a meteor storm has almost destroyed civilisation. Before them is an alien octopus: fragile, prophetic, curious, and possibly able to help humanity rebuild. Its attempts at contact arrive through music, touch, rhythm and visions that can be progressive, terrifying or intimate. Octopocalypse unfolds as an interactive music video, a prophetic projection, a war-room experiment and an emotional test. Participants must decide how to speak to a higher species under strain. Do they interrogate it, forcing answers from a mind far beyond their own, or slow down, listen and earn its trust? Questions, button presses and rhythm can change the outcome, as the group builds a track from patterns and musical impulses sent by the alien. The piece asks whether first contact is guided by curiosity and empathy or by fear and control. Octopocalypse is a story of crisis, projection and compassion, told through an immersive cinematic system in which image, sound, touch and collective choice become one experience. It asks whether humanity can recognise intelligence in a being it is tempted to treat as a resource.

Statement

With Octopocalypse, we explore a new form of filmmaking: cinematic narrative as an immersive, musical and interactive system, where image, sound, choice and presence become one live story engine. It suggests how visual storytelling may be built in the future, not as a replacement for cinema, but as an expansion of its emotional grammar. Generative AI is not used as a shortcut or an author, but as a tool that lets filmmakers prototype, refine and realise worlds, characters, voices and scenes with new speed and flexibility. The emotional intention, rhythm and point of view remain human. The medium becomes most interesting when it opens new storytelling possibilities without losing the craft of narrative and feeling. The installation asks participants to choose between extraction and trust, between preserving the status quo and imagining a more empathetic future.

Videos

• Inside the installationWalkthrough · Luma Octo
• Octopocalypse at Venice Immersive: the room, the visitors and the directorsPresentation · Luma Octo
• Venice Immersive 2026 press conferenceInterview · Luma Octo

More online

• Octopocalypse: official site · Luma Octo
• The Architecture Behind the Choice, by Christopher Schutte · Loop Exit Perspectives

Credits

Director

Max Sacker, Arite Szadkowski

Production

Luma Octo (Max Sacker, Arite Szadkowski)

Running Time

20'

Language

English

Country

Germany

Screenplay

Max Sacker, Arite Szadkowski

Editor

Max Sacker

Sound

Takuro Sakamoto

Art director

Max Sacker

Designers

Arite Szadkowski, Marian Neulant

Technical team

Jens Hallmann