New documentary ‘Dancing in the Desert’ about the Nuna 11 student team premiered on Wednesday

• Did you miss the premiere? The film will be screened at Filmhuis Lumen in Delft this Sunday 27 August at 14:00 and also on Wednesday 30 August at 19:30. 

The film follows the local TU Delft Vattenfall Solar Team, builders of the Nuna 11 solar car, as they sought to add yet another first-place Bridgestone World Solar Challenge trophy to their cabinet. 

2001, A Solar Odyssey

As shown in the film, the team is no stranger to fierce competition, and from the very conception of the team back in 2001, their prospective coach, Wubbo Ockels, the first Dutch astronaut and a professor at TU Delft, told the students “I will only participate if we are going to win.” With him aboard – and the help of novel solar cells used aboard the Hubble Space Telescope – win they did, becoming the first debut team to ever win the World Solar Challenge. 

The team’s winning streak continued for the most part, and they won seven of the nine following World Solar Challenges, finishing in second place in the remaining two. This winning streak was brought to a halt however in 2019, when disaster struck and Nuna X burst into flames just before the finish line. The Nuna X team had to watch helplessly as all their painstaking work literally went up in flames. In the film we are shown how the Nuna 11 team are eager to come back next year and prove themselves by taking back the World Champion title from their Belgian competitors. 

Unfortunately for them, fate had other plans and the 2021 World Solar Challenge was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Luckily, another prestigious solar challenge was arranged in Morocco, and the film follows the team as they battle against their competitors and all odds to create the most efficient solar car ever built and win the race.  

It’s still rock and roll to Bram

Bram van Splunteren, known for his pioneering music documentaries from the ’80s and ’90s made for the Dutch public broadcaster VPRO, took an interesting detour from this genre of filmmaking for this project. Interestingly enough, despite the lack of larger-than-life personalities such as Nick Cave or Anthony Kiedis, he doesn’t see it this way. In the press conference immediately prior to the premiere, he explained. “The students knew how to be themselves on camera, and show off their personalities.”

He noted another parallel between musicians and the team: “The way that bands come together to be more than the sum of their parts, I saw in the students”. He further added “The commitment and enthusiasm of the students was also incredible. That really impressed me.” In the end, he was satisfied with the level of ‘Rock ’n Roll’ spirit he managed to capture.

Bram brought his human-centred cinema vérité approach to the project. Laurien de Vos, one of the members of the team featured in the documentary stated that “I often didn’t know that I was being filmed. I was a bit scared of what would be in the film.”

^{(Photo: Hugo Onink)}

Becoming a team player

Laurien highlighted the positives that joining a student team can bring, despite the study delay it entails. “I learned something I had not learned in my BSc – how to work in a team.” She also mentioned the “sort of athlete mentality”. In fact, this mentality is epitomised in their choice of team coach – Olympic field-hockey coach Marc Lammers.

The film was awarded the Gouden Reiger, a Dutch film award that is given annually to the best film that has been commissioned or has a clear objective for a specific target group. The jury of the award stated that “It’s like you’re really there. Great to watch! It’s a beautiful documentary.” 

Why do we even engage in these wacky races? Is there some greater goal in mind besides just building the best solar-powered car? For the late Wubbo Ockels this competition was an opportunity to promote awareness of sustainable energy. By participating in solar races, the team wants to show the world the potential of solar power and push the limits of the technology. Joos Ockels, the widow of Wubbo Ockels, stated at the press conference that going to space spurred Ockels’ desire to care for the one planet we call home, as there is “no other place where we can live”.

Back to the outback

The Brunel Solar Team (successors to the Vattenfall team after a change of sponsor) is now making the finishing touches on this years solar car. This October, Nuna – now in its 12th iteration – will be burning rubber in the Australian outback once again as the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge is a go.  The new car is a step-up from its predecessor in several ways, explains Brunel Solar Team leader, Lennart Hessels. “Our battery is nearly 50% more energy-dense than last year. Our solar panel this year consists of multiple layers of materials that reflect sunlight into the cells, thereby increasing efficiency. By partially overlapping the cells, we can generate even more energy per square metre.” Another innovation is the use of bypass diodes in the solar cell array. Normally, an array is only as efficient as the least efficient cell in the system because of the way they are linked electrically. Bypass diodes allow for cells that are in the shade to be bypassed, rather than decreasing the efficiency of the whole array. 

The competition this year will be as stiff as ever, with the team not just facing off against the Belgian World Champions, but also two other Dutch teams and around thirteen international teams. Many of the competing teams dwarf the local favourites in size. Will eighteen plucky TU Delft students be able to pull off a win this year? 

• Dancing in the Desert will be screened at Filmhuis Lumen in Delft on Sunday 27 August at 14:00 and Wednesday 30 August at 19:30. After the latter screening, viewers can attend a Q&A with co-director Bram van Splunteren. The documentary is also part of the programme of the IFDA and IFFR film festivals. Non-Dutch speakers should not be deterred from coming along as the film has English subtitles.

Oscar Greenwell / Editor