Descending the Mountain

Feature Documentary Film, 78 minutes
Subtitels: English, French, Spanish, Dutch and German
Location: Switzerland
Production: Switzerland/the Netherlands
World premiere: Fall 2021

This film takes you on a journey of mystical revelations through magic mushrooms and meditations.
In ‘Descending the Mountain’ psychiatrist Franz Vollenweider and Zen master Vanja Palmers create a ground-breaking scientific experiment located on the majestic Mount Rigi in Switzerland.
The film shows if and how, when united, psilocybin and meditation might expand our understanding of the nature of consciousness.

Leaving the iconic visuals of the 60’s behind, ‘Descending the Mountain’ uses animation, sound, and A.I. to create a new visual language for the transcendent experience of oneness with nature.

“Descending the Mountain is exemplary for the current psychedelic renaissance. In the hallucinating setting of the Swiss mountains and the serenity of a monastery surrounded by nature, Maartje Nevejan takes us on an audio-visual journey through expanded consciousness. As in her previous work ‘Are You There?’ she uses various subtle techniques to document the enhanced reality of inner experiences. Visually surprising and with a mesmerizing sound track this film literally opens doors of perception akin to the effects of psychedelics.”
– Patricia Pisters
Prof Media and film studies University Amsterdam

In the Media

Zurich Audience

Finally a tender film about psychedelics

Parool Newspaper ****

A very special documentary that shows how we can connect not with, but as nature, to the rest of nature.

InScience Film Festival

This enchanting film shows us the value of psychedelics and mystical experiences for science and our humanity.

Filmmagazine ****

Seen through the eyes of Zenmaster Vanja Palmers, the world is one living organism. People, animals and plants are part of one big concioussness.
The A.I. creations are a magnificent recreation of the psychedelic experience.

NRC Newspaper ****

The tone of this film is pleasantly modest, but nevertheless very impressive and intellectually and spiritually tantalizing. Nevejan again developed an innovative and aesthetic new visual language for psychedelics, which puts her in line with a long tradition of filmmakers and philosophers, who see film itself, as a way to make the invisible, the transcendence and the (un) consciousness visible.
Dana Linssen

OPEN Foundation the Netherlands

The most beautiful documentary I have seen about the science of psychedelics. Moving scenes in a magical mountain scenery, and two mystical main characters: A Zen master and a Neuro scientist.
Joost Breeksema – director

Follow the mushroom Podcast

When pioneering science feels like watching a true fairytale, you know you’re witnessing something very special. A fundamental step of re-introducing, on the most stunning visual way, the mushroom on the highest levels of discourses.

Lucid News

This sweet story about the coming together of the brain scientist and the Zen monk is directed by the Dutch documentary filmmaker Maartje Nevejan, whose team of animators and special effects wizards add just enough bells and whistles to convey the subtle magic of the psychedelic state. Merely watching “Descending the Mountain” may increase the incidence of openness, optimism and mindfulness.
Don Lattin

Bedrock

By fairylike animations and fantastic images of nature, the beautiful film visualises how consciousness and nature are entangled.
Malu Kirschbaum

Synopsis & trailer

What happens when you administer psilocybin to experienced zen meditators? A neuroscientist and a zen master carry out a double-blind experiment on a sphinxlike mountain in Switzerland. Their goal: to examine the nature of consciousness.

“These substances are not for the sick only, they belong in the hands of meditation”
Albert Hofmann

Exactly fifty years after the ban on psychedelics a group of Zen meditators – who have never used any psychedelic substances before – are given psilocybin on the last day of a 5-day retreat. Half the group receives a placebo.

Mystical experiences are induced through a combination of deep meditation and psilocybin, a psychoactive compound found in magic mushrooms.
This scientific experiment, which was published in Nature magazine in 2020, may lift the controversy that has clouded the realm of psychedelics for far too long.

Where to see

DTM opened in cinema’s in the Netherlands in november 2021.

Film Festivals

November 2021
InScience Film Festival, Nijmegen The Netherlands

April 28 – May 3 2022
Academia Film Olomouc, International Festival of Science Documentary Films Czech Republic

May 13 – 22 2022
Millennium Docs Against Gravity film festiva, l Poland
World Economic Forum Davos, Switserland

May 2022
Nickelodeon Cinemas, USA

May – September 2022
Cultural Society, Deliberate Practice AB Sweden

June first – August 14 2022
BuddhaFest/Tricycle Online Festival all over USA

June 15-19 2022
Siberzalz Science and Media awards. Nomination Homeland Earth Award, Halle, Germany

June 29 2022
Broadcasting on Dutch TV, NPO 2 23:20 hrs

June 30 2022
Garden Festival Landhuis Oud-Amelisweerd, Utrecht.
Screening: 19.00 hrs

August 2022
Sphinx Cinema Gent Belgium

October 2022
Screening ROXY in Prague, Czech Republic

October 7-9 2022
Festival La Conscience dans tous ses Etats France

October 19-23 2022
Festival de Cinema Budista de Catalunya (FCBC), Barcelona Spain

October 28 2022
VOD premiere for Germany, Austria and Switzerland is set for October 28, 2022 by Polyband.

November 24 -26 2022
Spirit Film Festival Israel

2023
Distribution Canada is set by January 2023 by Levelfilm

Educational screenings

For educational screenings email MAGNETfilms in Berlin.

We are proud that students, art-schools, clubs, conferences and psychedelic societies, organise worldwide, with our help, special screenings.

May 2, 2022
Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine University of Utah USA

May 2022
Choka Sangha e.V. Germany

June 9th 2022
Buddist center, Bern, Switzerland

June 2022, date tbc
Victoria Association for Psychedelic Studies VAPS, Canada

June, 2022
Victoria Association for Psychedelic Studies VAPS, Canada

August 2022
Western New York Psychedelic Society, USA

September, 2022
Unsui Praxis Switzerland
ICPR Conference The Netherlands September, 2022

September 2022 – 5 days
Cultural Society, Deliberate Practice AB, Oslo, Sweden

October 11-17 2022
Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Global Summit USA

October 2022
Basel Hyperwerk, Switzerland

2023

Tricycle Magazine Monthly Film Club USA
January 2023 – online for a month (not online yet)

June 17-25 2023
The Psychedelic Society Maps Screening in Colorado USA

Berlin Mind Foundation Members, at Soho House Germany

University of Southern Maine USA

We had special screenings in Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Mexico, Switzerland.
CITIES: Berlin, Lausanne, Zurich, Paris, Lyon, Mexico City, Rotterdam, Nijmegen, San Francisco, Oslo, Stockholm, Den Haag, Baden, Marseille.

Where to hear

The soundtrack of this film contains music composed by Cosmo Sheldrake and Michel Banabila.

The making of

Behind the scenes of Descending the Mountain

“If approached respectfully and under good conditions, these substances have the power to facilitate the real deep spiritual mystical experience”

– ‘Descending the Mountain’

This video shows the making of the wonderfull animations (by Douwe Dijkstra), used in the movie.

Enjoy lots of ‘behind the scenes’ photos….