Seventeen miles in circumference and five hundred feet below the France-Switzerland border, the Large Hadron Collider is a massive scientific instrument and underground laboratory that uses high-energy particle acceleration to study the origins of the universe. While subterranean physicists simulate the conditions that immediately followed the Big Bang, filmmaker Bram Conjaerts talks with residents of the bucolic villages on the surface. The result is a charming and philosophical mélange of style and substance, where scientific data, animation, and man-on-the-street interviews collide. The Circle moves seamlessly between the above- and below-ground stories, and Conjaerts captures the villagers’ feelings about the machine beneath their feet and their musings, from eccentric to existential, on man’s quest for knowledge.  TM