Reflections

The post-screening commentary of writer and director Ariel Mahler offered a rich and layered reflection on how science, art, and identity intertwine in this striking short film. What emerged most clearly in the video-message was the way the film connects the cosmic and the personal, combining the story of a lost satellite and the human exploration of loss, rediscovery, and transformation.

The commentary began with Mahler recounting the project’s origins. The idea for Re-Entry came unexpectedly when her cinematographer sent her a short video about an astronomical phenomenon known as the “zombie satellite”. As the film maker explains, these are real satellites, launched many years ago that lost contact with the Earth and drift silently through outer space, unresponsive and often forgotten. Then, for reasons that remain mysterious, they sometimes reawaken. They get in contact again and briefly send signals back, as if they are coming back to life. Mahler was immediately fascinated by this image of a machine that had been lost and dead for decades, suddenly speaking again, re-entering communication across the void.

When Mahler began researching the phenomenon for her film, she found herself struck by how closely it reminded her of her own experience as a trans woman living in our world. Many trans people in our society, she explained, feel like being “in the wrong orbit” too, moving through life feeling disconnected or unheard. There is a sense of floating in a kind of metaphorical outer space, reaching out, waiting for someone to respond. The zombie satellite became, in her imagination, both a scientific object and a profound metaphor for that emotional experience.

Re-Entry is a short narrative film, that tells the story of Maya Redding, a former NASA engineer who once launched a satellite with her best friend, only to lose both the satellite and her career, in part because of her queerness. Decades later, living happily and openly as a trans woman, Maya one day finds that same satellite again and it feels like a literal fragment of her past life returning from the void. In rediscovering it, she is forced to confront her earlier self, her struggle, and her silence.

Mahler emphasized that research was a crucial part of developing Re-Entry. The film was supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which paired the filmmaker with a scientist to encourage authentic portrayals of science in film. Through this program, Mahler was connected with Dr. Josh Bloom, an astronomy professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Bloom became a key collaborator, helping her understand the scientific context of the story, researching what kind of satellite Maya might have built, what it would have been designed to study, and what data it might have collected. Together, they explored the concept of the cosmic microwave background, the faint radiation that still permeates the universe, left over from the Big Bang. According to Mahler, many satellites were launched to study this radiation in the 1980s and 1990s, in hopes of uncovering clues about the universe’s origins. One of the most fun and surprising aspects of Re-Entry’s production, Mahler revealed, was the experience of building a real satellite model for the film. Rather than relying entirely on computer-generated imagery, the team constructed a physical miniature and filmed it practically in front of a green screen. Mahler and her team based their fictional satellite on one of these real missions, grounding the film’s speculative premise in genuine science. The film reminds us that both scientific and personal discovery can come from a similar impulse, the desire to understand where we belong in a vast and often indifferent universe.

As a viewer of the film, I enjoyed the many layers of meaning of the metaphor of “re-entry”. On one level, it refers to the satellite’s return to Earth’s atmosphere. On another, it describes Maya’s re-entry into her own past, her confrontation with who she was and who she has become. Re-entry, in this sense, is not only about returning, but also about transformation. The heat of re-entering which can be the friction, the danger, the risk of burning up, becomes a metaphor for the courage required to face one’s history. Mahler spoke in message candidly about how making the film allowed her to explore her own journey of self-recognition, and how art can sometimes serve as a kind of re-entry, a way of returning to the world or more specifically to a former best friend after years of silence.

Reflecting about the film festival in general and Re-Entry in particular, I believe that Mahler demonstrated that science and art are not opposing forces, but parallel ones. Both are driven by curiosity, by the desire to make sense of the unknown. To conclude, I personally think that Mahler showed with Re-Entry that even when communication is lost, even when we drift off course, there is still a possibility of contact. It is ultimately a film about this belief, that what seems lost can still be found, that even across vast silence, a signal can come through again and in the end to bring up the courage can be worth it.