Having co-founded the m:brane co-production forum for youth content in Malmö and co-run it since 2007, Annette Brejner is, in every sense of the term, the forum's creative director. Among her realised visions, often focusing on non-scripted content, are intriguingly titled concepts such as “The Non-Didactic Universe” and “RealYoung”. We delved a little deeper into some unknown and unseen matters with the mistress of the universe herself.

Cineuropa: For those new to expressions like "m:brane Learning" and “The Non-Didactic Universe”, could you provide a crash course on how these concepts interact with the m:brane mission?
Annette Brejner: I'll start with a little background. Our forum for youth content started in 2007. We presented features and series, live-action and animation, almost exclusively in fiction form. Gradually, we started to attempt to interest the creators, producers and decision makers in our network in the documentary form. We wanted to provide youngsters with an expanded outlook, not least from auteur or independent creators in the documentary field. We then visited some festivals and related events that specialised in documentaries, and saw that there was some content for children and youth teaching them something – not in a didactic way, but rather inspiring them to seek things out for themselves. It could be about nature or about society – things that affect and interest us, all in non-scripted form. The Non-Didactic Universe is named as such because we try to embrace all of the relevant platforms and technologies. It does not have to be a “regular” documentary feature with its traditional A-Z dramatic arc; it could just as well be a web series, a YouTube clip or a game, and then the conditions for the work change, and it becomes its own.

One of the works we presented here this year, Cell Worlds by French biologist and doctor Renaud Pourpre, is an excellent case in point. He's a deeply original content maker who works with images and sounds, presenting the human cells in a way that can work for both an exhibition and a documentary film, as well as a musical experience; he even put the music on Spotify as a standalone experience. And he has indeed created a universe in the process of this task, which is to show how human cells look and work. An extra cool thing is that nothing is CGI or AI; it's just images of real cells! It's immersive in the truest sense of the word – it goes right into and comes right out of your own body. The boundary between yourself and the work becomes truly spiritual, truly personal and very non-didactic – and very much a universe.

Pourpre was one of the four presenters at this year's special Non-Didactic Universe sessions, labelled "Diving into the Unknown and Unseen: Science for the Senses". None of them is a “proper” filmmaker, interestingly.
They're not, no. There's a media professor, Costanza Julia Bani, who has a master of arts in Philosophy and Science; Mathias Seidler; and an architecture graduate, William Trossell. But what they all have in common is that they feel at home with the new technologies and see some possibilities that can align with their scientific mindsets, if you will. Their output is quite stunning.

RealYoung is another of your special concepts, in its 11th edition this year, with seven projects. It's sometimes referred to as an m:brane flagship initiative, and entails a process where documentary projects at the early stages of development are put through a workshop session where the creators meet decision makers and a group of “youth experts”. It's fair to guess that the “Real” hints at documentary and “Young” is a nod to the target group. Is this correct?
Very correct. It's a lab process where people have told me they walk in feeling quite naked, but walk out armed with a piece of magic. I don't have the exact figures, but a very large number of these projects get realised and go out to the big festivals. We've hit some real jackpots here – Kids on the Silk Road and Hobbyhorse Revolution [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] are two examples that come to mind, both very well-received. When Ove Rishøj Jensen and I started this concept ten years ago, more or less no one believed in us. Fast-forward to today, and there are forums all over the place, discussing and taking youth documentaries seriously. There are even some instances where the term “Real Young” has been used, but without referring to us, so we have now copyrighted and trademarked it.