Spaceship Earth
Directed & Produced by Matt Wolf
2020, 115 minutes


Watch The Film: Max, iTunes, Amazon, Streaming + International

Spaceship Earth Trailer from Matt Wolf on Vimeo


Spaceship Earth is the true, stranger-than-fiction, adventure of eight visionaries who in 1991 spent two years quarantined inside of a self-engineered replica of Earth’s ecosystem called BIOSPHERE 2. The experiment was a worldwide phenomenon, chronicling daily existence in the face of life threatening ecological disaster and a growing criticism that it was nothing more than a cult. The bizarre story is both a cautionary tale and a hopeful lesson of how a small group of dreamers can potentially reimagine a new world.

Spaceship Earth premiered in the US Documentary Competition at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was released by Neon. It was the first independent film released during the pandemic, with over 250 virtual cinema partners, drive-in movie screenings, and urban projections. The film was nominated for 2 Critics’ Choice awards, and is being distributed globally.

Neon Presents 
An Impact Partners and a RadicalMedia Production
in association with Stacey Reiss Productions
Produced by Stacey Reiss & Matt Wolf
Edited by David Teague 
Cinematographer Sam Wooton
Score by Owen Pallett - Listen



Matt Wolf’s layered, absorbing and sympathetic new documentary, is a madly inventive primer on responsible dystopian-hermetic living. But the film would make for fascinating viewing under any circumstances. - LA Times

A model of documentary craft, showcasing mainstream narrative nonfiction at its apex… hands audiences a new metaphor for, well, pretty much everything. - RogerEbert.com

A moving spark of idealism in our darkening current world. – Variety

The Biosphere 2 project now looks like reality TV, or maybe a conceptual art happening. Its quixotic extravagance is rather amazing. Best Films of 2020 - The Guardian

[Wolf] keeps his eye on a much bigger picture, which is how a hippie-utopian notion became an unlikely reality — and then turned into an Icarus-like parable of how big business and activism aren’t always the best bedfellows. - Rolling Stone

Viewed as a sort of epic Happening, an expression of the healthiest, most adventurous aspects of the counterculture as well as the fervent desire to protect the planet, the Biosphere 2 that emerges from Wolf’s documentary merits respect, even awe. - New York Magazine

An oddball adventure… wonderfully bizarre, it has the twists and turns of a funnel cake. –
New York Post

Sensational. A Wonder to behold. – Polygon

Vanity Fair Profile
Vulture Feature
Guardian Feature
Aperture Interview
Filmmaker Magazine Interview
Hyperallergic Interview
NPR Utah Interview