A Story of Stone & Men – A24’s Trailer for ‘Architecton’ Documentary
by Alex Billington
June 5, 2025
Source: YouTube
“When we design something, we design the behavior of people.” A24 has unveiled an official trailer for the documentary titled Architecton, the latest creation from master documentarian Victor Kossakovsky (of Gunda, Aquarela). This first premiered at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival last year, and will be released in the US in art house theaters starting this August (remarkably by A24!!). An extraordinary journey through the material that makes up our habitat: concrete and its ancestor, stone. Architecton is an epic, intimate, and very poetic meditation on architecture and how the design & construction of buildings from the ancient past reveal our destruction — and offer hope for survival and a way forward. 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 & repurposed anew. Through Kossakovsky’s inquisitive lens, the grandeur & 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? Starring legendary architect and designer Michele De Lucchi alongside several million tons of rocks. It’s a stunning film to watch, though gets a bit repetitive & redundant overall.
Here’s the official US trailer (+ poster) for Victor Kossakovsky’s doc Architecton, from A24’s YouTube:
You can also watch the original promo trailer for Kossakovsky’s Architecton right here for more footage.
From filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky comes an 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. Centering on a landscape project by the Italian architect Michele De Lucchi, Kossakovsky uses the circle 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. Architecton is directed by acclaimed Russian doc filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky, director of the doc films Svyato, Demonstration, Aquarela, and Gunda previously. Produced by Heino Deckert. This initially premiered at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival last year, and it also played at London Film Festival and AFI Fest the same year. A24 debuts Kossakovsky’s Architecton doc in US theaters starting on August 1st, 2025 later in the summer. Intrigued to watch this?