Call of the Silent Cell is an experimental film of cellular behaviour centred on the interplay between the gut microbiome, the immune system and wider concerns regarding the symbiosis of human and environmental health.

The beautiful patterns of nature, as we might experience on a walk in the woods, can also be found in our bodies. Call of the Silent Cell gives you the opportunity to briefly enter this magical world as a storm breaks, revealing we are not as separated from nature as we think.

In the film you journey with an old man who wanders through a forest, meditating on the fragility of his body and the environment. A storm arrives, ‘not of breath and air but of cells and their signals’, revealing a disturbance in the body, an immune system in overdrive. Emerging from the storm the old man gains a new wisdom that his bodily health is deeply intertwined with the life of the forest.

The film reflects on the latest insights revealed by single cell analysis and was produced in collaboration with Human Cell Atlas members, Marcin Pekalski and Melanie Dunstan, based at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, the University of Oxford.