13-23 nov 2025
EN/NL
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Eternal Habitat
Program
Eternal Habitat
DocLab

Eternal Habitat

Sergey Prokofyev
Germany
2025
6 min
Dutch Premiere
IDFA DocLab Program & Competition, IDFA DocLab Spotlight
Synopsis

The opening quote—“If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all”—comes from Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. From there, emerging from the darkness, we enter a world that we soon realize is only one of many. Gliding through space and time, we pass through moments in a human life—holding a baby, playing with a ball—that are dwarfed when set against the vast network of structures and worlds that elude our everyday gaze.

With a title that unites time and space, Eternal Habitat makes us aware of the living, dynamic environments in which our fleeting existence unfolds. Initially reassuring, Aurélien Bello’s music gradually grows unsettling as the black-and-white human world is revealed to be encircled by astonishing landscapes of color—in their intricate complexity, they attest to director Sergey Prokofyev’s other career as an architect.

This brief impression of eternity has won awards at specialized dome festivals in Jena and Colorado.

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Credits
6 min
Spoken languages: English
Director
    Sergey Prokofyev
    Sergey Prokofyev
Production
    Sergey Prokofyev
    Sergey Prokofyev
Sound Design
    Aurélien Bello
    Aurélien Bello
Music
    Aurélien Bello
    Aurélien Bello
Screening copy
    Sergey Prokofyev
    Sergey Prokofyev

Stills

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