‘Architecton’ Review: Victor Kossakovsky’s Magnetic Film Essay Reflects On Man’s Relationship With Nature – Berlin Film Festival

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It’s very easy to misread the title of Victor Kossakovsky’s latest documentary as “Architection,” since it is, in some ways, a detective story about the world we live in, albeit one in which it is very easy to figure out whodunit (spoiler: we did it to ourselves).

The actual title, Architecton, is a Greek word that means “master builder,” and the film plays with the irony of what that may mean — pitting the “master builders” of yesteryear against the “master builders“ of today — from the very beginning, using a cryptic line from “L’aquilone,” a rumination on bygone times by Italian poet Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912). “There is something new within the sun today, or rather ancient,” he writes.

This fascinating, engrossing film interrogates the subtext of this seemingly paradoxical statement. In a haunting prolog, we see the ruins of a housing estate in what is presumably war-torn Ukraine (Kossakovsky doesn’t always tell you where his cameras are pointing).

A drone soars above the carnage, revealing the extent of the damage to buildings where people once lived. The evidence of their having been there now seems almost pathetic; these spaces seem barely adequate for existence, let alone survival.