Chadi: Cinema is a popular art, which is very directly linked to our visual herit-age. Since the dawn of time, we have been used to seeing and being impressed by the infinitely large. That’s probably why we are not used to the smaller scales. We ignore that there is an infinitely small world. What is an atom? A trembling white pixel?

Jules: In your approach, you need science, which you precisely want to question. I see a real fascination for it.

Chadi: I can’t write a screenplay if I’m not able to evaluate whether it is feasible in reality or not. It doesn’t make me dream to meet vampires, dragons, or orcs, because science proves they don’t exist. Just as science fiction movies that wouldn’t be realistic.

Céline: On the contrary, doesn’t science create fiction, stories?

Chadi: Science doesn’t do storytelling, whereas it’s an important thing for the artist. We are expected to explain what we mean through our creations. I think this question of fiction also comes back to emotional questions, as Jules formulated. For me, it’s important that fiction creates an emotion—surely of dreams, escapism, the phantasmagorical—from science, by creating possible and plausible worlds.

Jules: The question of plausibility is important for scientists too. Especially when questioning existing scientific laws, the plausible dimension of a new discussed theory comes into play. A few years ago, an experiment was conducted at CERN, where a particle that traveled faster than the speed of light was measured.4 It turned out to be a matter of a poorly soldered cable. It really made us all ques-tion: was this result plausible given the current state of knowledge? In the world as conceived by scientists, it is unthinkable that anything could travel faster than light. But an artist may want to create a film with elements that go faster than light. And that can in turn question scientists.

Céline: Are there films that do not take science as a subject but where science plays a role in the approach or even the cinematic form itself?

Chadi: Yes, I think of a sequence in Interstellar where the characters arrive on the new planet. A lot of work was done on the tempo of the music to evoke the fact that time passes differently on each of the planets. When we watch the film, it’s emotional, it’s powerful. We feel that there is a change in tempo, the music is more stressful. We understand that the characters spent 20 minutes on this planet, which corresponds to 40 years on Earth.

The film Tenet is also interesting. Nolan invented a time machine. He explained that he created his own science, and for that, he found a material that stretches, where time goes backward. There is this session with a scene happening in both worlds, one that follows the current time, and the other, which unfolds in the inverted time. They are filmed by the same camera. We see both worlds collide, and it’s the end of the film. It’s magnificent.

Jules: More precisely, how do you integrate science to create your special effects?

Chadi: I remember a sequence I did for the second Matrix. The director wanted the camera to enter TV screens and show what was happening inside. We bought magnifying glasses to see what happens when we get as close as possible to a screen. We scientifically questioned this detail to better understand it and try to recreate it.