Architecton

What is the relationship between architecture, nature and civilisation? What role does stone play in this and what concrete? And are we building sustainably enough? it is these pressing questions that documentary filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky (Aquarela, Gunda) addresses in this film essay. To find the answers, he travels to the ancient ruins of Baalbek in Lebanon, earthquake-ravaged Turkish cities and destroyed buildings in Ukraine. Central to his argument is the ‘magic circle’, a landscape project by pioneering Italian architect Michele De Lucchi, a place where people are not welcome. Lucchi's credo: ‘We need to look for solutions where no one has found them before.’

Kossakovsky advocates humility in the face of nature, and he does so in hypnotic images. In this way, he offers a whole new perspective on a world that, after all, we do not know as much as we thought. Those images are underlined by the mesmerising soundtrack by Russian-French composer Evgueni Galperine.