About the film

By coincidence rather then by design the swiss chemist Albert Hofmann makes a sensational discovery in the spring of 1943. He realizes that he is dealing with a powerful molecule that will have an impact not only on the scientific world. “The Substance…” - is an investigation into our troubled relation with LSD. Told from its beginnings until today. In 1943, the year in which the first A-bomb was built, Albert Hofmann discovered LSD ¬- a substance that was to become an A-bomb of the mind. Fractions of a milligram are enough to turn our framework of time and space upside down. The story of a drug - its discovery in the Basle chemistry lab, the first experiments by Albert Hofmann on himself, the 1950s experiments of the psychiatrists, the consciousness researchers, the artists… Could it actually be possible to find a path to the core of our human existence by means of a chemical? Spirituality at the flick of a switch? Do the enigmatic effects of this drug really help us to better understand the human soul? Could LSD be an instrument of contemporary psychiatry? Of modern brain research? In the Cold War, the US Army and also the CIA begin their systematic experiments with human beings - LSD as a weapon. And then, in the early 1960s, the “miracle drug” escaped from the lab.

Wybrane nagrody i festiwale /Selected festivals and awards: 2011 - MFF Locarno/Locarno IFF, 2011 - MFF Toronto/Toronto IFF