In Jewish legend, the golem is a body shaped from clay and brought to life through ritual incantation. Created as servant, companion, protector, it is meant to defend a threatened community. But something shifts and the creature grows beyond intention.

This ancient myth of artificial life forms the basis of Thomas Ryckewaert’s Golem. A story of creation and control, of desire and hubris. Of the old human impulse to make something in our own image — and the fear that it might surpass us.

From the Bible to Frankenstein, from alchemy to artificial intelligence, the same question returns: how far can we go?

With a silent, cinematic visual language, Golem traces the fragile boundary between human and matter, reason and dread. Face to face with a figure that resembles him — yet is not him — a man faces the possibility that the monster was never in the clay, but in the gaze that shaped it.

‘A magnetizing universe, a hypnotic tunnel. Ryckewaert is one of the most intelligent and theatrically skilled directors of his generation, ready for the big stage.’ – De Standaard