Architecton

Inspired by the architect Michele De Lucchi, we ponder the material rise and fall of civilizations, from the ancient ruins in Baalbek to the Turkish cities reduced to rubble by the 2023 earthquake. The film is a poetic meditation on design and architecture, which tell us so much as to our hopes for survival.

COMMENTARY
Victor Kossakovskij produces a visual meditation on architecture itself, sweeping yet intimate and poetic at once. The planet Earth can no longer sustain the grandiose architectural monuments that use the Earth itself for their construction, while modern buildings made of cement have a devastating environmental impact. Breathtaking images of the ruins of ancient temples, Turkish cities leveled by recent earthquakes, or Ukrainian homes gutted by Russian bombs are interwoven with an array of civilizations and societies and the same underlying thread: humanity’s mad designs.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
¡Vivan las antipodas!, Aquarela and Architecton changed me immeasurably. It was Tolstoy who said we must accept that we are not the only form of life in existence. The protagonist of War and Peace, instead of God, invokes the great “Architecton” of nature. He says: “Help me get out of this maze of lies.”