A mostly wordless visual essay in the mode of Reggio/Glass and AQUARELA, his own ode to water, Victor Kossakovsky’s imposing and epic-scale earth opera fixes its eye on stone. A mountainside explodes in a disorienting cascade of tumbling earth, tracing its transformation to rock and ultimately concrete. A drone pulls back from a war-torn Ukraine, its apartment blocks depopulated and blown in half. An artist precariously balances stones on a tripod in a hyper-focused pull to the ephemeral, and an architect surveys the massive precision-cut Baalbek ruins in Lebanon — and, back home in Italy, is constructing a stone circle in his backyard to stand the test of time. Composer Evgueni Galperine’s sonorous abstractions lock in punctuation with Kossakovsky’s rhythmic editing of IMAX-worthy imagery that overwhelms — but provides no quick answers regarding the implications of what we take from the earth in order to build upon it.
“Blatantly dazzling, epic-scale filmmaking that nonetheless invites viewers to consider the implications of our awe.” —Guy Lodge, Variety “The Russian auteur has been roving the planet for two decades now, employing state-of-the-art equipment and the best cameramen around to capture life on Earth — though not in the way David Attenborough once envisioned it. His documentaries are pure visual tone poems or essays, using little commentary and tons of breathtaking imagery to capture the world we live in, whether it’s the water we drink (AQUARELA), the animals we breed and consume (GUNDA) or the far-flung locations we sometimes inhabit (VIVAN LAS ANTIPODAS!). You don’t watch a Kossakovsky movie as much as you take it in with eyes wide open, immersing yourself in images and associations that present everyday phenomena in a whole new way.” —Jordan Mintzer, Hollywood Reporter
