Werner Herzog’s new “science fiction” film finds itself classified in the “Framing Reality” section of this year’s festival. It’s not a documentary, but clearly has a message to pitch about global warming and manmade waste and neglect. His solution? Relocate the entire human race to another planet for several hundred years, allow the Earth to recuperate, and then return. If only it were possible, given Brad Dourif’s cynical rant about rocket fuel and space exploration and how, if a manned craft were to travel to the nearest star Alpha Centauri at the fastest humanly possible speed, only 15% of the journey would be complete after 500 generations and the entire evolution of mankind, from Neanderthals to iPods.

But the film continues, hopefully, describing a team of astronauts’ successful mission to The Wild Blue Yonder (filmed with spellbinding mystique under frozen water, complete with tunnels of light and jellyfish who speak African gibberish), a hospitable otherworld discovered by way of a cosmic wormhole. Herzog indulges in this, and a generous helping of NASA space footage, lingering for extended periods to the narcotic sounds of Ernst Reijseger’s score. This sent about a dozen audience members with the attention span of a small child scurrying for the exit. In their rude haste, what they failed to realise is that Herzog is a dreamer, marveling at how far we have come, no matter how impossible the final frontier might be.—Tim Wong