Alan in Belfast: Doppelgängers^3 – three women present a challenge to the current testosterone-fuelled rocket race to live in space (DocsIreland on Wednesday 25 June)

Doppelgängers³ (cubed) is an avant-garde, experimental documentary that sees Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian and two similar-looking women explore why conversations about Mars don’t seem be consciously attempting to learn from history.

Nelly sets out to ask whether there are voices missing from discussions and thinking around plans for off-planet living. With government-funded agencies and billionaire-backed private companies at the forefront of plans to put humans back onto the moon and ship them to Mars, is mankind – and in this case, definitely ‘man’-kind – doomed to repeat past mistakes.

Wikipedia sums up the goal of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Mars colonisation programme as “to establish a self-sustaining, large scale settlement and democratic, self-governing colony”, adding that “the motivation behind this is the belief that colonising Mars will allow humanity to become multiplanetary, thereby ensuring the long-term survival of the human race if it becomes extinct on Earth”.

Hmmm.

Colonisation has such a good track record here on Earth. Always fair. Always looking out for the vulnerable. Never trampling over other people’s rights. Never profiteering from other people’s work. Nothing to see here in the rich men’s plans to breed in space, devolve heavy industry to space, and experiment with capitalist colonisation!

Doppelgängers³ is neither comprehensive nor conclusive, but the film is definitely entertaining and articulates the problem space. The question of whether microbes found on other planets or moons should have rights may sound abstract and academic, but you don’t have to mull over the question for long before realising that every group of people or set of resources you exert power over will suffer by default unless there are good checks and balances, goodwill and grace.

The rationale for three ghostly doubles comes from quantum physics. Nelly’s near-clones – one of whom is given a crude ‘bob’ haircut to make her more closely resemble Nelly – represent parallel universes, where the main protagonist might have been fully Algerian, or fully Albanian, instead of being a mix of both.

If collective and inter-generational trauma influences how we develop and see our futures here on earth, how might we unintentionally drag our baggage into space? While research programmes looking at how cohesive groups can be sustained in cramped conditions over long periods have an element of interdisciplinary input, could a much wider set of voices bring surprising revelations and add notes of valuable caution?

The three lookalikes interview a range of experts, many of whom who bring good insight from well outside the normal space sector. But because the documentary is a provocation rather than a Master’s thesis, the quality of their views doesn’t need to be tested. Style tends to win out over substance in this zany venture.

What visually keeps dragging your mind back to asking whether this is an enormous satirical vehicle imagined by someone like Sacha Baron Cohen with Ali G or Borat about to appear around a corner. I doubt the participants were aware of the distant framing technique or the green screen effects that would be applied to their contributions!

Pussy Riot contribute to the soundtrack. While the film lives up to its promise of looking through a feminist lens, the queer aspect of the exploration is less developed, almost using the term as a synonym for ‘alternative’ rather than sexual or gender identity.

The three women dress in loud jumpsuits and don impractical spacesuits. They often carry a toy cat or allow real cats to interrupt the filming of interviews as a constant reminder of the Schrödinger's cat metaphor running through the film’s premise.

Along with the interviews, much of the 73-minute run time is devoted to their participation in a moon-living simulation. Without spoiling the film, it’s safe to say that some of the doppelgängers are surprised at how unsettling the haphazard experience is, while others are surprised by how much they want to keep investing in the experiment, albeit without due consideration of proper teamwork or rulekeeping.

The editing is novel, but this is gimmickry with a purpose.

Doppelgängers³ is being screened in the Beanbag Cinema at 18:30 on Wednesday 25 June. And there’s lots more still to come throughout the week in the Docs Ireland festival of international documentary film which runs until Sunday 29 June.