From legendary documentary filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky (director of “Belovs,” “Gunda,” “Aquarela”) comes an epic, intimate, and poetic meditation on architecture. This film explores how the design and construction of buildings from the ancient past reveal our destructive tendencies and offer hope for survival and a way forward.
Focusing on a landscape project by Italian architect Michele de Lucci, Kossakovsky uses the circle to reflect on the rise and fall of civilizations, 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 stones connect disparate societies, from ghostly monoliths embedded in the earth to tragic heaps of concrete rubble waiting to be hauled off and repurposed. Through Kossakovsky’s inquisitive lens, the grandeur and folly of humanity and its precarious relationship with nature pose an urgent question: How do we build, and how can we build better before it’s too late?
