Earth has seen better days. If the staggering wealth inequality, concurrent dictatorships, and growing number of genocides weren’t enough to ruin the party, perhaps the fact that it may grow inhospitable within our lifetimes will yuck your yum. The planet has long been struggling to manage its growing climate crisis and it is now to the point that space, the final frontier, is considered our only viable option for survival. Billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are already building infrastructure to colonize space stations and distant planets, while major world powers are preparing satellites and shuttles as weapons of intergalactic war.
If all of this sounds depressing, that’s because it is, but there’s an antidote: plurality. According to Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian, director of the new compelling experimental documentary Doppelgängers³, we have an opportunity to use space not as a way of simply moving from one place to another but as a chance to start over, to consider our planet’s deeply flawed, even traumatic framework and try again. The way we do this is by including a wider spectrum of perspectives in the decision-making process. This is why Hayoun-Stépanian’s documentary, which centers on a simulated experiment to see whether her and two loosely-defined doppelgängers could survive on a space mission together, includes interviews with not just scientists but with activists, economists, and even other filmmakers.
The result is a scattershot (by design) exploration of humanity’s future that is injected with energy and humor, electrified with the music of Pussy Riot and featuring a blue-screened sculpture of Schrodinger’s cat as a recurring visual motif. In her interrogation of what the world could be without precedent, Hayoun-Stépanian similarly strips her film of all convention and displays her own unique vision for filmmaking. It certainly will not be for everyone, but those who can find themselves in her latest film will be swept away in an uplifting exploration that will set the next generation’s minds and hearts ablaze with exploration and rumination. Hopefully, with Hayoun-Stépanian’s help, the kids will be alright.
GVN spoke extensively with Hayoun-Stépanian about her latest film in this exclusive interview, edited for length and clarity. Topics covered include: how to pronounce the film’s name, why Elon Musk’s Tesla space launch inspired the film’s production, finding her two doppelgängers online, the power of the hard cut, the film’s connection to Robert Zemeckis’ Contact, and why Hayoun-Stépanian chose to work with four editors.

So, first of all, how do you pronounce the title? Is it like “Doppelgangers Cubed?” Is it “Doppelgangers, To The Third Power?” How do we officially say the title?
You know, Larry, you’re the first person to ask me this, so it’s all fresh to me, but you’re totally right. It’s “Doppelgangers, Power of Three.”
Interesting. In America, most people would say “Doppelgangers Cubed” or “Doppelgangers, To The Third Power,” depending on how math savvy they are. Technically, if you had a 2, it would be “Doppelgangers Squared,” and I feel like “squared” in America is pretty colloquial, as opposed to “to the second power.” I’m curious how your moderator introduces this film, if they’re going to include a “3.”
I love the reading.
Can you give our readers a primer on you as a filmmaker and what your new film, Doppelgängers3, is about?
There is something magical not about space, but this notion of being able to build something from scratch elsewhere. Even in the global context, space and space exploration is still very much dominated by the American space race, as just seen recently with [the 2001 Mars] Odyssey and the fact that, right now, we have a rover [the Lunar Roving Vehicle] on the moon long after the first walk on the moon. This is very much an American endeavor with American private collaboration. Doppelgängers3 is really about the idea of reclaiming the opportunity for humanity to actually start investigating new futures as opposed to just spending their time replicating the trauma of the past. Why is it that the only two visions we have currently for space exploration are, one, the idea of exploiting natural resources of space and filling it with businesses and industry, which is the Jeff Bezos vision, or, two, the Elon Musk vision, which is much more about becoming a multiplanetary species where we’re going to send people from the moon to Mars and keep on colonizing, because the that’s the word that is being used? The premise of this film is inviting a plurality of voices that come from a diaspora of people who have been in displacement, people that have experienced the trauma of the past, whether it’s colonization or genocide or other things, and to actually start asking are we, as the human species, able to come up with more ideas or actually activate our imagination in a different way. That’s why I think there is an urgency for this film to be released now and for the members of the public to also take part in this questioning. Effectively, it’s not just a process that’s addressing the past so we can move more equipped into the future, but it’s also about actually saying, “We don’t want that. We don’t want just a replication of what we currently have on the planet Earth,” which, as we can see, has many conflicts. It’s a very hopeful movie. That’s why the film is very much targeted to 18 to 25 [year olds] in terms of the audience, and that’s, as I’m sure you have noticed, the music is very much banging.
Yes. Very, very bangin’. [both laugh]
All [the music was made] by Pussy Riot and an amazing record label as well, RVNG Intl.
They’re fantastic.
In terms of my personal history with space and space exploration, for more than a decade now I’ve funded the Experience department at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute [SETI], which is based in NASA’s Ames Research Center in California. They’ve been established for many years, since 1986. Their job is to try to figure out whether or not we’re alone in the universe. I’m also the vice chair of the International Astronautical Federation Cultural Utilisation of Space committee. I’m involved in many different space policy federations. They all have really long names. [laughs] Basically, I have as many titles as I have fingers. In a way, my film is really hopeful, but it’s only as hopeful as I wish to see the landscape that I’m a part of because I write space policy, because I’m involved in writing decolonial practices in space, because I’m working with people like Bezos and Elon Musk. I’m part of this conversation about the space sector and how the landscape might evolve and how the systems of governance of space and space exploration might look globally, in terms of outreach and education. That’s why I think I needed to make this film now more than ever, and that’s why I thought I was quite well placed also because of my personal heritage. I also speak to diasporas and displacement, so that’s how it started.

In the United States, it feels like the idea of commercial space travel is still thought about with a novel, exploratory mindset, like when we first sent people to the moon. I don’t think the deeper colonial ramifications of it have been considered by the American people. Your film was certainly an “ah ha” moment for me, but what was your “ah ha” moment when you realized that this needed to be talked about?
When Elon Musk sent his Tesla car to space, that’s the moment when I was like, “Wow.” I did a movie before this one called Disaster Playground, which was about the chain of command if an asteroid were to impact Earth. There is a scene called “planetary defense,” which is about making sure that, when we go into an alien territory, we don’t just come and mess up microbes and the life that might be there, but we are careful with what we do. There is a conversation to have about who has the right to life and messing up other extraterrestrial lands. All of these conversations didn’t stop Elon’s egocentric [launch] from happening. That’s when it was kicking in, the thought that this is just not okay. Every year, every single space agency worldwide meet in a place called the International Astronautical Congress. JAXA, the Indian space agency, the Chinese space agency, ROSCOSMOS, and NASA, we all meet. We’re divided into different communities to discuss education, outreach, new private and public sectors. We had one session that was called “Better Colonizing Mars.” Everyone was invited to speak about colonizing Mars without even questioning the impact of the words that were being used because they define a certain trajectory and a very linear vision, which, in a way, is completely lacking imagination. That’s the point of this film. It’s bringing all of these different perspectives together and not saying that one is better than the other. I’m leaving the members of the public to make their own recipe of all of these voices and ideas.
What you call imagination I would call non-ego, just empathy.
Yes.
Awareness of other than self.
Ecofeminist. That’s what you are. You’re an ecofeminist, Larry. That’s it.
Where did you come up with the idea of including doppelgängers and where did you discover the eponymous two doppelgängers featured in the film? You briefly discuss searching for them, but I’m curious where it all really began.
Initially, it was an experiment I was doing while working in public speaking. At one point, I had to be in different places at the same time to deliver a speech. I started to hire doppelgangers to deliver speeches at different locations and points in time. It seemed obvious to me that if I couldn’t travel to different locations, then I had to triplicate. My practice is always about infiltrating power structures or questioning the way that systems exist and doing it with a lot of humor. After that, I thought about how, specifically in popular culture, the doppelgänger is both the ideal version of yourself but also the regressed version of yourself, the person that you don’t want to see. Rémi Bennett [a horror filmmaker featured in the film] speaks about how the doppelganger is a very personal journey about identity. I think every single one of us, especially with social media and the new tools that we have, are much more entitled to actually find a dislocated version of ourselves somewhere else. That’s exactly what happened to me. In order for me to find my doppelgängers, I literally took to social media during COVID, which is when I won the Sundance Institute grant to make the movie. That was really sad for me because the fellows of the Sundance Institute usually go [on a retreat] and get the time to network about your film treatment, and I didn’t have any of that. I had to dream through the very limited tool that I had with social media, but I made some calls. I asked people to find who knew people in Algeria and Armenia. That’s how I landed with Lucia Kagramanyan, an incredible DJ who actually ran her own radio show called “Panorama” on NTS radio. She wasn’t really keen [on participating in the film] initially. She was like, “Oh, I’m going to try and help you to find someone,” and then eventually she got on board. [The second doppelgänger] Myriam Amroun is a cultural producer. Again, she was supposed to find me someone that would find me someone and then it became quite clear that we had a lot in common. It just felt right.
One of my favorite formal choices you made directing this film is that you are almost always in-frame with the subjects during the interviews, to the point that you sometimes digitally insert yourself so you can be next to the subject. It solidifies your role as the film’s narrator or emcee. It’s almost as if it’s like a post-film Q&A or something and you’re a moderator. You also shoot many of the interviews with an extremely wide angle lens, which adds another unique layer to the production. Where did these ideas come from?
I’m really glad that you noticed the wide angle [photography] because that was a very clear point for me. I wanted nature to be a character in the film and I wanted the environment to be a character in the film as much as the humans. I needed to really bring as much landscape as I could into the [film] so that we could also make it clear that all of those different elements have a role to play in the definition of the future. You will notice that sometimes, in the edit, [someone’s] voice begins speaking [on a shot of] rocks and then [cuts to] the person. Some of the characters’ voices are actually put against the natural elements. That was a clear point for me as well. Then, when it comes to my digital presence in the film, I used myself as a character to bring in this element of humor. You will notice I bring props, as well. I tried to remove a layer of [expectation] so that I could get to the core of what I actually wanted to say. That’s the method that I’m using, we call it the “Theatre of Cruelty.”

Based on the eclectic group of subjects you interview in the film, you must have traveled extensively and all over the world. Does that inform the process in any way?
Yeah, totally. For me, it’s essential, especially because I come from a diaspora. My family has experienced displacement. There is something about the journey, there is something about actually being in movement that leverages a certain level of imagination or dreaming. That was necessary for the film to take place. You will see that there is a lot of improvisation. I think most documentaries these days are written prior to the film being taken place. That’s much more expensive, so I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone. [both laugh] In my case, I like to just let the film happen. I go and meet with someone and they’re like an oracle. They take me to the next person and then the next person and the next person. You find that there is a logic, in a very strange way, into how all of them connect but also don’t connect at all, from Uday Singh Mehta, who will pledge for madness in the future, to Professor Graciela Chichilnisky who is talking about the diamond industry and how carbon is going to be the next economy. All of them probably wouldn’t get along if they were together in the same room and that’s what excites me. It’s so important in a moment where we are in a bipolar [world] where you are right and I am wrong, so I’d like to advocate for plurality and pluralistic thinking. It’s resistance [to the world]. It’s at the core of what I like to do, and I’m so happy that you could see that in the form, as well.
Speaking of props, we have to talk about the motif of Schrodinger’s cat. You have a sculpture of a cat that reappears throughout the film. Where did that come from?
It was one of these things that seemed so logical to me. If we were to talk about space and space exploration, we had to start looking into intergenerational trauma, quantum physics, and then doppelgängers as a starting point for this experiment. It’s a scientific experiment, this idea that three characters are going to react differently to authority if they are separately conditioned and put together inside a space. That’s what you see in the cave section [of the film]. Schrodinger’s cat is such a defining moment in the history of physics and quantum physics, to actually say that a cat can both be dead and alive at the same time. This idea that there are parallel universes, parallel worlds, that there are many different layers of time that exist, it’s mind-blowing. The moment we start to understand that and understand that this is actually science, this is actually physics, this is the world that we live in, the limitations of our homocentric ideas become so obvious. For me, this cat is actually something that I took throughout the entire movie because it always reminded me to try and think beyond the common sense that I learned in school. Common sense doesn’t mean anything in quantum physics. This idea of common sense needs to be questioned because, again, we do not need [the limitations] … you could be naked on the moon. Why do we need to take this burden of society we have made for ourselves when we have actually a blank canvas that we can play with.
The blue-screen keying of the cat was also an interesting choice to me.
Very 80s.
With keying, a lot of people mess around with it in a very obvious, intentionally noticeable way, and some people argue that it ruins a film’s immersion, but really it’s just another aesthetically formal element of the film. I was wondering if you could share with me your take on that. What is the power of a lo-fi blue screen effect?
I love that you’re asking me these questions! Doppelgangers3 has this 80s feel. It’s everything. I was at one point talking to Google Arts and Culture, who are currently developing an AI for filmmaking. Initially, the concept was that I would feed the AI with some recording of nature that I would make, and then this AI would give me my alien, Unreal Engine mashup of a new aesthetic I was going after, which had to be defined by an alien, something that is not human. That’s what I was looking for in the aesthetics, which are [shown] using blue-screen. But then it wasn’t ready in time, so I had to try and figure out something else that would be quite strange. I’m a daughter of the 80s, born and raised in 1985, and I was trying to find an aesthetic as well that would be like white noise. The more you learn about space and space exploration, the more you actually learn about lo-fi equipment. Most people don’t know you can connect with the universe just by having your radio next to you and just going in between frequencies. That “shh” noise you hear is actually white noise that the universe is making. It is the world of lo-fi, in a way. I really wanted to have the [same] energy that you would get with a tape recorder like when I was a kid playing with a Fisher-Price. I’m sure you’ve seen this. [Nelly brings out an authentic vintage Fisher-Price toy.]
[laughing] Amazing. Yet again, speaking of props.
You’re probably too young for this, but this is the beginning of the boombox. This is how I was recording [things] when I was a kid, literally. It’s a bit nostalgic.
Yeah. I’m more of the Easy Bake Oven generation, but you talking about the white noise reminds me so much of Contact. Jodie Foster connects with her father through white noise.
Funny you mention that because, in Doppelgangers3, you meet Jill Tarter, who talks about microbes having rights.
That’s one of my favorite lines in the whole film.
So, Jill Tarter is the inspiration of Jodie Foster.
Woah.
Contact, the book written by Carl Sagan, is written about Jill. They were colleagues, of course, because they funded the SETI Institute together. All of those things are there for a reason. They’re all connected.

It’s one gigantic web. We should spend some time talking about Pussy Riot, who you’ve collaborated with before. You talked about wanting a very modern sound, but I am curious, beyond even just the music, what is your relationship with Pussy Riot and why do you think that they’re a good choice to be built into the fabric of the movie?
I mean, there are so many reasons. First of all, musically, totally extraordinary. The way that Nadya [Tolokonnikova, founder of Pussy Riot] is putting music together, she does it as an art form and as a form of performance against power, against authority. Nadya is very much a noise artist and a punk artist. She will say it herself. This means that you don’t know if the noise you hear will be something that is necessarily melodic. It creates a kind of discomfort in your mind. I think with a lot of documentaries, people tend to fall asleep.
[laughs]
That’s my experience with my partners. I take them to documentaries and they all fall asleep. I can’t stand that. I like to shake up people’s minds. For me, it’s very physical. I’m not just making an image that is going to go into your brain, I like to shake [your brain] like a theater director that throws blood into your face, that wakes you up. Nadya, and her music, does that. Especially the way we have edited it into the film, it really does. When you least expect it, it just goes. Sometimes it can be really annoying, right? That’s why I often say that my films are like Marmite. People love it or hate it. When they hate it, they really hate it because it makes them feel uncomfortable. They walk out of the room. [I wanted to include Pussy Riot’s music] for that reason, the discomfort, the genre [deconstruction]. Then, on a more personal level, obviously Nadya is from Russia, but she’s living in exile in the US since Putin labeled her a terrorist. She cannot go back to Russia. She has experienced this notion of displacement firsthand. When she was in jail, I did an interview with her and we were talking how, for Nadya, the moon was this hopeful territory. When she was stuck in jail, the only thing she could see at night was the moon. It’s something that is not owned by Putin. For her, the need to reclaim imagination also has to do with freedom and freedom of thinking. On that point, we are very much alike.
That is actually very interesting because, just recently, reports came out that Russia plans to put something into orbit that would essentially mess with American satellite channels, take down cellphone towers, and lead to nuclear disarmament. Now, I’m thinking about space as a theater of war, which goes hand-in-hand with your film.
This is what it is. You quickly realize that space governance is at the level of the UN, at the level of nation states, their warfare, and defense. All of the space missions right now globally are sponsored by defense. They’re coming from defense budgets in each of the nation states that have a space mission because it’s warfare. Space is warfare. It’s not just Russia. It’s the US. Everyone has been doing it for years. That’s why everyone needs to have access to space right now because it is the right to compete on that level. It’s the right to self defense. That has been there forever. It’s this principle that everyone’s messing with space and creating debris without any rational thinking.
I want to go back to the music. One of my personal beliefs is that the cut is the most powerful tool in cinema, and you love hard cutting on music.
Yes!
I love it but I also hate it because the music is so good that I just want it to keep going.
[laughing] Yes.

Is there a power to the hard cut? What goes into your mind when you decide to use one. Is there a destabilization that you’re trying to channel?
Oh my god, Larry, you’re the best! I’m so happy about this experience and this interview. Thank you so much for taking the time to watch the film. If you look at the credits, you will see that there were four editors. Then, we also had two associate editors. For me, it was a bit like piano being played with four different hands. and that was kind of the idea. I wanted this polyphonic aspect, not only in the form but also into the actual process of the production, which was a nightmare for both me and the editors, I’m not going to lie. You have an editor starting for two weeks, then you have another one coming in, then another one. My doppelgängers would also give feedback on the cuts. That was also part of the polyphonic aspect. It was really this very diluted experience, in a way. With that in mind, I agree with you totally. At some point, I was like, “You know, Nelly, it would be so nice just to [leave] the music.” Sometimes, I wanted to just [leave] the music, show the landscape, and let it be. But, at the same time, I really wanted to create discomfort and [the hard cutting] was part of the idea. Every time I felt myself falling in love with the music, I knew that it was wrong because it wasn’t the form that I wanted for the film. I wanted this film to not be recognizable in terms of any reference points. I wanted it to shake up your ideals, again, of what a narrative film needs to be. The one compromise I’ve done is my voiceover. Initially I didn’t want any voiceover anywhere close to the film for obvious reasons. If you’re not into traditional formats, you’re never going to [use] voiceover.
It makes or breaks, for sure.
But then nobody would understand the film if I didn’t have that voiceover. Let’s just be real.
[laughs] It’s true.
So, we just found a way to make it happen.
This scenario with all these different editors, did that also inform the kaleidoscopic nature of the edit? There’s a lot of cross-cutting between sequences.
I really wanted this kaleidoscope aspect. That’s why it was organized [in this way]. I cannot speak for the editors, of course, but I felt like it really played to their strengths. Each of them automatically fell into a certain area. For example, Rachel Roberts has been doing the film Is There Anybody Out There?, where her main character has ability issues and is also trying to find her double who also has the same ability issue. She did that film, so she was much more familiar with this idea of memoir. She was really adamant—and she did all of the first part of the film—to try and help the viewers understand the context before we dove into the doppelgängers. [She tried to] simplify the elements. That was extremely important because it was hard. It was a really hard film to make. Everything I’m talking about is not easy to digest, and it had to be accessible. That was my number one rule. It had to be accessible, that 18 years old anywhere in the world should be able to dive in.
Doppelgängers³ held its World Premiere as part of the Visions section of the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival. It is currently seeking distribution.

Larry Fried is a filmmaker, writer, and podcaster based in New Jersey. He is the host and creator of the podcast “My Favorite Movie is…,” a podcast dedicated to helping filmmakers make somebody’s next favorite movie. He is also the Visual Content Manager for Special Olympics New Jersey, an organization dedicated to competition and training opportunities for athletes with intellectual disabilities across the Garden State.