An experimental documentary that draws on the experience of diasporas to challenge the commercialisation of the moon. Through encounters with doppelgängers and meetings with scientists, visionaries, and cultural inventors, Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian and her doppelgängers offer an experimental vision and template for a future diaspora beyond Earth. The film culminates in an analog space mission in a deep cave in Spain in which we see Ben Hayoun-Stépanian and her doppelgängers experiencing a moon utopia. But things do not go according to plan.

From the earliest voyagers who navigated by starlight to the discovery of habitable planets by astronomers, Rock Bottom Riser examines the all-encompassing encounters of an island world at sea. As lava continues to flow from the earth’s core on the island of Hawaii—posing an imminent danger—a crisis mounts. Astronomers plan to build the world’s largest telescope on Hawaii’s most sacred and revered mountain, Mauna Kea. Based on ancient Polynesian navigation, the arrival of Christian missionaries, and the observatory’s ability to capture the origins of the universe, Rock Bottom Riser surveys the influence of settler colonialism, the search for intelligent life, and the discovery of new worlds as we peer into our own planet’s existence.