A scene from “Gagarine” by the Liatard-Trouilh couple.
G.AGARINE
Gender: Utopian-Sci-Fi Comedy
Directed by Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh. With Alséni Bathily, Lyna Khoudri, Jamil Khoudri, Jamil McCraven, Finnegan Oldfield, Farida Rabouadj, Denis Levant
A childhood dream that becomes a political challenge, not by force of social conflicts (which there are), but thanks to the power of the imagination. This is what the first work by Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh tells us, a little big surprise at the beginning of this cinematographic year.
A scene from the film “Gagarine”
The scenario is that of the Gagarine district, in Ivry-sur-Seine, made up of gigantic barracks built in the 1960s on a questionable idea of progress and which in 2019 must be demolished to make way for more modern homes.
But the teenager Yuri, who bears the name of the first Soviet astronaut, in whose honor the settlement was baptized, doesn’t want to leave his home. Because his fantasy has turned it into a missile aimed at the stars ready to go.
A scene from the film “Gagarine”
AND while the demolition work proceeds, with the help of young Roma Diana and friend Hassam, fight against time so that his “dream” is not interrupted by the eviction.
And while the electric wires are “transformed” into spatial cables and the windows into portholes, the film uses Jurij’s utopia to face the reasons for reality and the strength of collective identity (in the end everyone side with him) against the logic of progress at all costs.
For those who believe that cinema still knows how to tell fairy tales.
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