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The
film sets black-and-white drone footage of quarries, temples and
cities destroyed by earthquakes or missile strikes to sumptuous
brass music from composer Evgueni Galperine, interspersed with
scenes of Italian architect Michele De Lucchi erecting a stone
circle in his garden.
"Sugar, cement, the two drugs of our century," Kossakovsky told
reporters at the Berlin Film Festival, where the film premieres
on Monday, contrasting cheap Turkish housing levelled by
earthquakes with the endurance of the 2,000-year-old temple
Roman temple at Baalbek. "We have to stop this catastrophe."
De Lucchi, who designed Tbilisi's swirling Bridge of Peace as
well as office equipment for Olivetti, laments that after
completing his stone circle he will go back to working on a
concrete skyscraper in Milan.
"I hate concrete because it's aridity," De Lucchi says. "Nothing
will grow up in a concrete building."
The film, one of 20 running for the festival's top Golden Bear
prize, is flawed: for example Ukraine's Black Sea city of
Mariupol is a ruin not because its houses were badly built but
because they were struck by Russian missiles.
And although the film is critical of poor concrete designs, it
doesn't address the greater social evil of homelessness.
It's a failing that Kossakovsky, wearing a blue-and-yellow lapel
pin expressing solidarity with Ukraine, acknowledges.
"If I put everything in my film, it will be four hours minimum,"
he said. "And people don't like to watch four hours, right? So
it's a contradiction."
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Ros Russell)
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