SYNOPSIS:

An archaeologist and a sculptor explore how art and archaeology—through bodies, objects, and deep time— can help us figure out what it means to be human. Figuring It Out is a short documentary built around an intimate conversation between archaeologist Colin Renfrew and sculptor Antony Gormley. Drawing inspiration from Renfrew’s book Figuring It Out, the film explores how humans have sought to understand themselves through making—making tools, images, monuments, and bodies in space. The film unfolds as a private dialogue: two thinkers from different disciplines circling shared questions about matter, consciousness, and time. Renfrew approaches archaeology not as the study of dead objects, but as an inquiry into how ideas, belief systems, and symbolic thought take material form across millennia. Gormley responds from the perspective of the artist, speaking of sculpture as a way of knowing—using the human body as both subject and instrument to test space, gravity, stillness, and presence.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:

Andreas Apostolidis is a filmmaker and one of Greece's leading crime novelists. His most recent documentaries include 'Citizen Europe' and 'A Place Without People'.

AWARDS and SCREENINGS:

Firenze Archeofilm 2026