Victor Kossakovsky’s Architecton gets a release date

BFI Distribution announces the acquisition, from German sales agent The Match Factory, of Architecton (2024), written and directed by Victor Kossakovsky (Gunda, Aquarela) for theatrical release in the UK and Ireland. The film, which takes audiences on an extraordinary journey through the building materials concrete and stone, had its world premiere at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival, where it was nominated for both the Golden Bear for Best Film and the Documentary Award. Its UK premiere is at the 68th BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express (9-20 October) on Saturday 19 October at BFI IMAX, the UK’s biggest screen. The theatrical release date will be 10 January 2025, followed by release on BFI Player on 25 March.

Architecton is epic, intimate, and poetic meditation on architecture and how the design and construction of buildings from the ancient past reveal our destruction — and offer hope for survival and a way forward. Centring on a landscape project by the Italian architect Michele De Lucchi, Kossakovsky uses the perfect circle of stones in De Lucchi’s garden to reflect on the rise and fall of civilisations, 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 stone connect the disparate societies, from ghostly monoliths stuck in the earth to tragic heaps of concrete rubble waiting to be hauled off and repurposed. Through Kossakovsky’s lens, the grandeur and folly of humanity and its precarious relationship with nature posits the urgent question: How do we build, and how can we build better, before it’s too late?

Alongside Michele De Lucchi, Architecton features stonemasons Mauro Mella and Davide Alioli, stone artists Nick Steur, Baalbek Megaliths preserver Abdul Nabi al-Afi and Middle East ancient ruins specialist Maksim Gaubetc. It was produced by Heino Deckert with co-producers Clara Vuillermoz, Estelle Robin You and Charlotte Hailstone. The director of photography is Ben Bernhard.

Julie Pearce, BFI Head of Distribution, said: “As we were sitting watching Architecton in Berlin, we were excited at how spectacular these incredible images would look and sound on our massive BFI IMAX screen on the South Bank, famed, of course, for its Brutalist architecture. After its LFF UK premiere at BFI IMAX, we’ll be programming further screenings there when it opens in January, combined with screenings at BFI Southbank and its release in cinemas around the UK and in Ireland – we hope on the biggest screens possible!”

Architecton was made by Ma.ja.de. Filmproduktion (DE) in co-production with Point du Jour – Les Films du Balibari (FR), in association with A24 and Hailstone Films, in co-production with ZDF in association with arte. Funding was from Eurimages, DFFF, Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. Development was supported by MEDIA Development and FFA – German-French Minitraité and Région des Pays de la Loire.

BFI Distribution recently released feature film Starve Acre and will release the Cannes Grand Prix-winner, All We Imagine as Light on 29 November. It released the documentaries Scala!!! and Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer at the beginning of the year.