Please note: This was screened in Oct 2022
Isolated, inventive 16-year-old Yuri (Alseni Bathily) has lived in Cité Gagarine all his life. He dreams of becoming an astronaut, inspired by his namesake and the Gagarine’s too – Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, seen in ’60s archive footage opening the complex in a more optimistic age.
But now the Gagarine is in disrepair, and when plans to demolish it are leaked, Yuri joins with friends Diana (Lyna Khoudri) and Houssam (Jamil McCraven) in an attempt to save it, transforming the estate into his very own ‘starship’.
Wildly imaginative, Gagarine explores themes of isolation and community, using the physical authenticity of its setting to ground its starry-eyed metaphysics so that they seem almost plausible too. Exploring how we communicate with buildings, how they entwine with our memories, imaginations and selves, and how we cope with the effects of forces outside our control, it’s a tender study of stratospheric aspirations thriving against the odds.
Presented as part of Future City Film Festival, which takes place biennially in the autumn but had to be postponed last year due to the pandemic. It will now run through 2022 as a series of special events with the support of the British Film Institute awarding funds from National Lottery.
In association with Institut français du Royaume-Uni.
