‘Preemptive Listening’ is a work of non-fiction cinema which re-imagines sirens in order to forge a new understanding of present and long term emergency. The siren serves as a worldwide
cipher of potential trauma, an emblem warning of climate catastrophe, a mouthpiece for sonic governance and crisis management. Many sirens are relics from WW2 and the Cold War, repurposed to communicate the threats of extreme weather, a collective commemorative pause, or resurrected to test disaster preparedness.

Through a soundtrack of new siren sounds composed by an array of experimental musicians, the film asks: Does an alarm have to be alarming? How can we counter alarm fatigue, both as a lived reality and as a metaphor for our current state? Can we envision sounds not only scored to immediacy, but signals set to a longer temporal frame, sounding the alarm for the distant future, the cries on the cusp of ecological catastrophe? Can we imagine sirens beyond the human? The soundtrack features the endlessly escalating sounds of planetary data; animal howls and the grief of extinction; soaring banshee-like warnings; defiant trumpets; intricate harp permutations; the sounds of the earth’s core. The film posits the siren’s loud glissando wail as a
conditioned and learned signal, one that can potentially be rewired.

Dir. Aura Satz | 89min | 2024 | Finland, UK

"An activist in the US explains that for her, as a black woman, the flashing blue light of an emergency vehicle is not safety and help – it means danger. At Fukushima, the clocks are left hanging, frozen at the time of the nuclear disaster in 2011. A Maori activist talks about reframing our relationship with nature – and there is a sense here of a siren clanging loudly, mostly unheeded for impending environmental catastrophe" - Guardian

"At a time when modern thinking and science are unable to provide adequate solutions to ongoing and escalating emergencies, the siren is seen as a prism of possibility for the emergence of new ways of perceiving and responding" - CPH:DOX, Winner New Visions Prize

"The film’s landscapes possess a ghostly quality, a dark majesty that recalls the melancholic modernity of documentarians such as Nikolaus Geyrhalter and Michael Glawogger" - Prospect Magazine

"Breaking free from the weight of catastrophes past, Satz’s film conjures alternative ways to respond to the siren’s call as a path toward possible futures" - MoMA Doc Fortnight

"a bold, sophisticated essay about the state of the world. Both disquieting and mesmerizing, filled with grandiose, troubling images and a wide variety of soundscapes that literally make me vibrate and tremble, the film creates a hypnotic, often nightmarish atmosphere, but one that also suggests a utopian future" - Senses of Cinema

"a litany, an invitation, an invocation of the siren....Does an alarm have to be alarming?" - Open City Documentary Festival

"A particular highlight is a typically massive organ-and-bells performance from Sarah Davachi over footage of the gigantic cooling tower of a soon-to-be-demolished coal-powered plant in England, sonic and visual giganticism paired in effective tandem" - Filmmaker Magazine