Michael Pitt and Astrid Bergès-Frisbey in ‘I Origins’

Fox Searchlight has just released a new trailer for director Mike Cahill’s I Origins, his second feature after the breakout science fiction film Another Earth (2011). Searchlight almost immediately purchased the distribution rights after the film premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.  The film subsequently won the festival’s Alfred P. Sloane Prize for science/technology-themed filmmaking (Another Earth won it in 2011).

In Cahill’s second endeavour in “speculative fiction,” as Fox Searchlight puts it, I Origins explores questions of science, faith, and reincarnation.  Rooted in the idea that the eye is the window into the soul, I Origins tells the story of Dr. Ian Gray (Michael Pitt), a molecular biologist specializing in the human eye, who falls in love with the elusive but beautiful Sofi (Astrid Bergés-Frisbey). After Sofi’s tragic death, Gray embarks on a journey of scientific enquiry and spiritual healing as he studies Sofi’s unique eye structure from his photographs.  Exploring his hypothesis of the eternal soul, that a part of Sofi still exists in some form on Earth, Gray believes that the eye may hold the key to how the soul manifests itself after an individual’s death.

Mike Cahill directed, wrote, and co-produced the film with Another Earth veterans Hunter Gray and Alex Orlovsky (The Place Beyond the Pines [2012], Blue Valentine [2010]).  Actress Brit Marling, who starred and co-wrote Another Earth with Cahill, also stars in the film.  Other notable cast members include Steven Yeun (The Walking Dead [2010- ] and Archie Panjabi (The Good Wife [2009- ]).  I Origins will be released in select theaters on July 18.