Erogenesis is a film created within the framework of the project Ectogenesis, a speculative fiction. The narrative unfolds around the following premise: in the aftermath of a mysterious disaster, the few surviving humans find themselves unable to reproduce. All hope lies in the hands of five women. The rumor is they have developed the technology to create human life outside the body. But the researchers have another priority: the study of pleasure. While the world waits, they immerse themselves in bizarre erotic experiments.
The title of the film arises from a combination of concepts. The term ECTOgenesisoriginates from Greek – combining ECTO- (meaning “outside”) and GENESIS(meaning “creation”) – referring to the idea of life developing outside the body. Combined with the notion of EROgeneity, it forms the title EROGENESIS.
Elena Malzew (EM): To start, let’s explore the theme of human reproduction in your film. What drew you to this subject? This choice is particularly interesting as it marks a departure from your previous work – such asPerfect Two(2022) or Sentimental Stories (2023) – and, in this case, you approach the genre of science fiction. Science fiction has a long-standing tradition in literature and film. Although historically male-dominated, it has been powerfully shaped by influential female voices like Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Octavia Butler, who use speculative fiction to explore gender, sexuality, and power structures. Their work often navigates between utopian and dystopian visions to challenge patriarchal norms and reimagine social dynamics and technology’s impact on marginalized groups. These ideas feel deeply connected to your work, and I’d love to hear how you approached them in this film.
Xandra Popescu (XP): As a child, I used to watch a sci-fi show on Romanian Television (TVR) with my father. Science and Imagination was a talk show between two men in gray suits, pedantic and all knowing in a way that was almost comical. This was during the transition period. But science fiction had also been extremely popular during communist times in Romania. There was a myriad of clubs with names that seemed to be drawn from a galactic manifesto: Andromeda, Aeternus, Kings of the Sands, Quo Vadis, Explorers of Tomorrow, and The Third Millennium. A few years back, the curator Stefan Tiron made an exhibition which maps this enthousiasm.[1]
As a teenager, I began to dislike science fiction. To me, it seemed trapped in a world of the past, over-explanatory and faintly absurd. I rediscovered it very late through the works of Octavia Butler, which I read voraciously. For this film, I liked the idea of making a deliberately “poor” sci-fi. But there was something more: something deeper — a break with realism and causality. I wanted to use a new method. I call it “wishful thinking.” At some point, I invited my producer Clara Puhlmann into the writing process. Our idea was to build a world shaped by desire and seduction, not by realism and plausibility. This principle guided the writing, production, set design, color palette, sound — everything.
And you’re right — science fiction has created a space where we can rethink gender, power, and marginalized experiences. In Erogenesis, we wanted to imagine a world where a group of scientists could save humanity — through technology, not the body. But they choose not to. We wanted to deconstruct the survival narrative: these women refuse the responsibility of perpetuating the species and choose, instead, pleasure as a form of urgency.
EM: Could you explain the concept of Ectogenesis and provide some historical references related to it?
XP: Ectogenesis has been an inexhaustible source of sensationalism throughout history. If I were to trace a few landmarks in its trajectory, I would first think of the occultists of the sixteenth century. They were obsessed with the possibility of creating artificial life. Success would have meant a paradigm shift: creation would no longer have been a divine prerogative. Paracelsus, for instance, was trying to create miniature humans by sealing semen inside the womb of a dead horse and letting it rot.
Fast forward to 1932, and Aldous Huxley stirred up the hysteria of technological determinism with Brave New World. Here, embryos are fertilized in test tubes and meticulously designed for rigid social roles. We stand warned: technology is dangerous. It leads to servitude and ruin.
In 1970, Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex rescued this idea from the grip of dystopianism. She envisioned it as a way to overcome the “tyranny of reproductive biology” and a path toward gender equality.
Her idea opens the door to imagining more: the dissolution of gender, new ways of feeling, and the emergence of new types of subjectivity. And that’s what guided us while making the film.
But much like our protagonists, my team and I were much more invested in ERO than in ECTO. I’d go as far as to say that ECTO was the pretext, and ERO was the reason.
EM: One of the protagonists of your film is Dr. Kollontai, the founder of the Center for the Study of Erogenity. She is named after Alexandra Kollontai. Kollontai was a transformative figure in early 20th-century Soviet Russia. As a Marxist revolutionary and the first female minister in the world, she championed abortion rights in the Soviet Union and became the first female ambassador, advocating for women’s rights at the intersections of socialism, feminism, and class. Could you elaborate on this reference and its contemporary resonance? The choice feels particularly relevant, as reproductive control remains a critical issue today. Governments continue to enforce policies on population regulation, as seen, for instance, in certain U.S. states and, more recently, in Russia, where the Duma is considering laws against so-called “child-free propaganda”, potentially penalizing those who choose not to have children. Dr. Kollontai’s presence in your film draws a compelling parallel to these themes of autonomy and resistance, linking past struggles to today’s ongoing battles over reproductive freedom.
XP: Kollontai was a total badass. A century ago, in Soviet Russia, she was already speaking about the family as a mechanism of patriarchal control and the burden of reproduction.
We are asked to deliver new lives, and this work, of extreme intensity, is enveloped in a fatalistic and romantic aura, designed to conceal its immense costs. I believe it is the most intense form of labor possible. Nowadays, many women and people with wombs are beginning to refuse it as a biological destiny. And then there are those who perceive this as a threat and a fracture in the predetermined world order.
We wanted to evoke a Kollontai of the future – one who would exist in this imagined context. What would she desire? Where would the collapse of the sex/gender distinction take her? So, we created the character of a xenofeminist researcher who dreams of a world free from reproductive labor, where a hundred new sexes could bloom.[2]
EM: An essential element in the film is the “reproduction machine”. It is not just a prop, it is a sculpture and functions almost like a protagonist. What can you tell me about it?
XP: It is a device in the shape of a giant spider. It was designed and built by Matei Cioată. In the research process, we explored many directions, as you can see in the sketches below.
The references were the sculpture Maman by Louise Bourgeois and the speculative architecture of the Archigram group blended in an infusion of cyberpunk. The device features telescopic legs and is made from a material that appears to be stainless steel, but isn’t. Matei used 3D modeling and printing. Conceiving and adapting the design of the device on location took months for it to exist for just one day during shooting.
EM: As a final question, I would like to ask how your film engages with and maybe even challenges historical patterns of objectification in cinema. Referring to the concept of wishful thinking that you introduced at the beginning of our conversation, does the film imagine alternative narratives for female characters?
XP: If you think about it, the history of cinema is full of propaganda. Propaganda for heteronormativity, heroism, and protagonism. The whole package. But we are not trying to convince anyone of anything. EROGENESIS doesn’t do propaganda. Not even for childless cat ladies.[3] Although, if I were to make propaganda, I couldn’t imagine a better cause.
[1] The map was produced for exhibition “Timpuri Noi: Xenogeneze” ale SF-ului curated by Stefan Tiron exhibited in 2021 at Rezidența BRD Scena9 in Bucuarest and INDECIS artist-run space in Timișoara in 2023.
[2] Xandra Popescu is referring to one of the dictates of the Xenofeminist Manifesto (2015), authored by the collective Laboria Cuboniks. One of its key assertions is: “Let a hundred sexes bloom!” The manifesto advocates for the use of technology and science as tools for emancipation. It stands againsy naturalized gender roles and aims to dissolve biological determinism. Their core belief is “If nature is unjust, change nature!”
[3] This refers to a statement made in 2021 by J.D. Vance, who was at the time a candidate for the U.S. Senate and later became Vice President of the U.S. He stated that the United States is “run by a bunch of childless women with cats, dissatisfied with life and the choices they’ve made.”