Seto Momoko is a Paris-based filmmaker and media artist. Her highly innovative work, which has been shown at film festivals around the world and won various awards, deals with ecology and environmental issues, employing striking styles using macro lenses, slow motion, and time-lapse photography to issue a wake-up call for the post–climate change future. The compelling footage in her work pulls the viewer in and takes them all the way to the chain and cycle of life itself, and to the countless numbers of planets that exist in the universe.
PLANET A (2008), which Seto made during her residency at Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporains, has screened at such events as the International Film Festival Rotterdam and Locarno International Film Festival. With PLANET Z (2011), Seto won the Grand Prix at the 2012 Paris International Fantastic Film Festival, and the Audi Short Film Award at the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival for PLANET ∑. In 2017, the virtual reality film PLANET ∞ screened at the Cannes International Film Festival. In 2019, Seto created a large video mapping project for Lille-Flandres Station, and, in 2021, was awarded the Crystal Medal, given by the French National Centre for Scientific Research for creativity that contributes to the advancement of knowledge. A full-length film, tentatively titled PLANETS, is currently in production, shooting in Iceland, France, Japan, and Brazil as the culmination of the “PLANET” series and scheduled for release in cinemas in 2025.

PLANET ∑ is the third in the series, following PLANET A and PLANET Z, which portrays the history of life and the environment on a particular planet each time. On an ice planet, a submarine volcano erupts, insects begin to come to life out of the melting ice, fungi grow, and an ecosystem emerges. But when the submarine volcano erupts again, the sea dries up, the land becomes parched and cracked, the fungi dry up, and finally huge masses of dead bees drop out of the sky. The bees on our own planet are currently at risk of extinction and the strong flash of light that hits the bees in the film evokes a nuclear bomb explosion. PLANET ∑ prompts us to reflect on both the titular planet’s ecosystems as well as the impact of climate change and environmental issues on our own.