An essay film on the origin, power, and transformation of images.

The First Image of the World explores one of humanity’s oldest questions: what is an image? Blending philosophy, cognitive science, animation, media theory, archaeology, and artificial intelligence, the film traces the long evolution of images—from the earliest human marks to generative AI—to understand how they shape perception, memory, imagination, and reality.

The film argues that images are not simply representations of the world; they actively participate in constructing human experience.