The documentary “The Light with the Time Inside” produced by IMDEA Nanociencia wins the Prismas Award for Best Video
22.09.2026
- The documentary, part of the dissemination plan of the ERC-TOMATTO project, will premiere at the Science and Technology Film Festival in Krakow.
- They jury highlight that the documentary "makes an enormously complex physical phenomenon accessible and exciting without neglecting the human side of scientific research".
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Madrid, 22nd September, 2026. The documentary The Light with the Time Inside (La luz con el tiempo dentro), produced by IMDEA Nanociencia and Filmociencia, has been awarded the Prismas Award for Best Video at the 39th edition of the Prismas Casa das Ciencias a la Divulgación Científica awards. Directed by Luis Gómez-Juanes, the documentary explores the scientific challenge at the heart of the European project TOMATTO: capturing the motion of electrons during the first instants after molecules are hit by pulses of light. Funded by an ERC Synergy Grant, the project brings together researchers working in Madrid and Milan to observe and understand molecular processes taking place on extremely short timescales.
The jury highlighted the documentary for “making an enormously complex physical phenomenon accessible and exciting without neglecting the human side of scientific research.” The Prismas de Bronce will be presented by Luis Gómez Juanes (director and screenwriter), Paloma Banderas Bielicka (director of photography) and Elena Alonso (producer) during an awards ceremony on 14 November 2026 at the Concello da Coruña. The jury was chaired by Rocío Benavente Pérez, scientific journalist and deputy director of Fundación Maldita, and comprised Gemma del Caño Jiménez, pharmacist specialising in the food industry and science communicator; Yolanda Golías Pérez, professor in Experimental Science Education at the Universidade da Coruña; and Diego Ortega Alonso, professor of Art Education at the University of Jaén and scientific illustrator. Marcos Pérez Maldonado, head of the Scientific Museums of A Coruña, acted as secretary of the jury.
The documentary will have its world premiere at the Science and Technology Film Festival in Krakow, where it will be screened for the first time before an international audience. More than 1,000 films were submitted to the festival, and TOMATTO has been selected to compete for the Best Short Documentary award alongside 12 other productions.
The "Light with the Time Inside" was produced as part of the dissemination strategy of the ERC Synergy project TOMATTO to Profs. Fernando Martín, Nazario Martín and Mauro Nisoli, with the aim of bringing the project's research and the people behind it to audiences beyond the scientific community. The film follows a journey between Milan and Madrid, bringing together researchers involved in TOMATTO and offering an insight into the experimental facilities, computational tools and collaborative work involved in studying electron dynamics on some of the shortest timescales accessible to science. Filming took place at the Attosecond Laboratory of Politecnico di Milano, the Facultad de Ciencias Químicas of Universidad Complutense de Madrid, the Supercomputing Center at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and at the laboratories, offices and cafeteria of IMDEA Nanociencia.
A synergistic project
The TOMATTO project, funded by an ERC Synergy Grant awarded to Professors Fernando Martín, Nazario Martín and Mauro Nisoli, aims to capture the ultrafast dynamics of electrons following impact by light beams. The project focuses on the attosecond timescale, which is the relevant timescale for charge transfer processes in solar energy conversion materials and devices.
The European Research Council (ERC) is funding the project through an ERC Synergy Grant, a funding scheme that enables groups of between two and four principal investigators to jointly tackle ambitious scientific problems that cannot be solved individually. In its early stages, the project also received support from the Community of Madrid through a Synergistic R&D Project, an initiative designed, amongst other objectives, to encourage the participation of research groups from the region in ERC Synergy calls for proposals. In this context, IMDEA Nanociencia played an active role in two of these synergistic projects, which served as a platform to foster collaboration between groups and help attract an ERC project of this scale to Madrid.
Related information
Dictamen del jurado de los XXXIX Prismas Casa de las Ciencias a la Divulgación https://www.coruna.gal/mc2/es/detalle/dictamen-del-jurado-de-los-xxxix-prismas-casa-de-las-ciencias-a-la-divulgacion/suceso/1453927335281
Contact:
IMDEA Nanociencia Dissemination and Communication Office
divulgacion.nanociencia [at]imdea.org
Source: IMDEA Nanociencia
IMDEA Nanociencia Institute is a young interdisciplinary research Centre in Madrid (Spain) dedicated to the exploration of nanoscience and the development of applications of nanotechnology in connection with innovative industries.