Shifting Baselines

About the film

Boca Chica, Texas. Also known as Starbase, the launch base of Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX. Since May 2025, it has been an independent municipality. While Musk dreams of a journey to Mars, the beach and nearby nature reserve are plagued by pollution. In stunning black-and-white cinematography, we see how gigantic phallic rockets dominate the landscape. In Shifting Baselines, director Julien Elie tells a nuanced story without sensationalism, in which both admirers and critics have their say. This particularly urgent and topical documentary is an intelligent plea against intergenerational amnesia, drawing a connection between the longing for lost times and the exploitation of colonialism.