Review: Rockumentary ‘Architecton’ looks stone-cold stunning

2025 / Dir. Victor Kossakovsky

☆ 3.5/5

A gold-domed cathedral in the distance. The camera pulls back and moves straight through the fractured split of a Ukrainian apartment building damaged from the war. An ant slowly crawls over ancient stone ruins. A mountain is chopped and blown apart; the fragments are crushed and compacted to be turned into concrete. These are just some of the stunning images captured by Viktor Kossakovsky (Gunda, Aquarela) in the A24 documentary Architecton.

More of a visual poem set to a post-industrial, symphonic score by Evgueni Galperine, Architecton eschews narration or traditional documentary direction, instead relying almost entirely on stunning, drone-captured images to create its own storytelling language. Kossakovsky repeatedly shows us ancient stone relics that have been standing for hundreds or thousands of years sitting next to ugly “modern” cities already decaying or destroyed by war and natural disaster. 

While these images naturally bring up questions about humanity’s place in the world and treatment of our natural resources, this isn’t an overly polemical film. Kossokovsky films both cement production and a landslide with similar levels of amazement and wonder while pushing the boundaries of drone videography. One slow-motion sequence of a landslide as the drone camera flies to the right, slightly quicker than the falling rocks and boulders, would best be described as “out of this world” if it wasn’t literally grounded in earth. 

In between these extraordinary sequences, the film returns over and over to two workers building a circular rock garden in architect Michele De Lucchi’s European estate. A late conversation that emerges after the garden’s completion helps to give clarity to some of the film’s ideas, but these moments of De Lucchi deciding which stone he wants where are far from thrilling. 

The film does start to feel a bit repetitious after picking up on its visual pattern and what it’s trying to do, but, fortunately, a tight 98-minute runtime prevents Architecton from ever feeling boring. That’s not to say the older gentlemen sitting next to me didn’t enjoy a nice nap during the back half.

Watch if you like: Rocks, National Geographic documentaries, and wondering why everything is crappier than it used to be when you were young.