Dir. Victor Kossakovsky
2024 | 98 mins | Germany, France
English, Italian with English subtitles

Showing Times

• Fri 10 Jan: 3.50pm
• Sat 11 Jan: 10.55am + 3.55pm
• Mon 13 Jan: 6pm
• Tue 14 Jan: 3.30pm + 8.30pm
• Wed 15 Jan: 6pm
• Thu 16 Jan: 3.30pm

Victor Kossakovsky (Gunda, Aquarela) captures astonishing images, from the ancient temple ruins of Baalbek in Lebanon to the recent destruction of cities in Turkey following a seismic earthquake, to reflect on the rise and fall of civilisations. A ravishingly cinematic project born of environmental urgency, the film asks us to consider how a better relationship with nature might allow humanity to survive.Nominated for the Golden Bear for Best Film & the Documentary Award at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival

Architecton, an A24 and Neue Visionen presentation, written and directed by the master documentarian Victor Kossakovsky (Gunda, Aquarela), is a visually stunning film which takes audiences on an extraordinary journey through the material that makes up our habitat: concrete, and its ancestor stone.

He raises a fundamental question: how do we inhabit the world of tomorrow?

The film had its world premiere at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Golden Bear for Best Film and the Documentary Award. Its UK premiere was at the BFI London Film Festival 2024.

Architecton is an epic, intimate, and poetic meditation on architecture and how the design and construction of buildings from the ancient past reveal our destruction — and offer hope for survival and a way forward. Centring on a landscape project by the Italian architect Michele De Lucchi, Kossakovsky uses the perfect circle of stones in De Lucchi’s garden to reflect on the rise and fall of civilisations, capturing breathtaking imagery, from the temple ruins of Baalbek in Lebanon, dating back to AD 60 to the recent destruction of cities in Turkey following a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in early 2023.

Rocks and stone connect the disparate societies, from ghostly monoliths stuck in the earth to tragic heaps of concrete rubble waiting to be hauled off and repurposed. Through Kossakovsky’s lens, the grandeur and folly of humanity and its precarious relationship with nature posits the urgent question: How do we build, and how can we build better, before it’s too late?

BBFC Rating

Rated U

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

The Brutalist (18) | Fri 31 Jan – Wed 05 Feb