GAGARINE
A stargazing teenager puts his cosmic dreams and engineering skills to work when he and his friends band together to save their beloved housing project from demolition.
This miraculous debut feature takes as its inspiration the real-life Cité Gagarine, a housing development that was built by the French Communist Party in the 1960s and took its name from a famous Soviet cosmonaut. Creatively building upon the improbable elements of this true story, filmmakers Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh have created a miraculous, thrilling coming-of-age fable with a magic realist streak. 16-year-old Youri (Alseni Bathily) lives in Gagarine Towers, a massive housing project in a downtrodden suburb of Paris, where he spends his days dreaming of becoming an astronaut and watching the skies from the tower’s rooftop. When he hears about a plan to tear down the buildings, Youri joins forces with his friends Diana (Lyna Khoudri, THE FRENCH DISPATCH) and Houssam (Jamil McCraven) in a last-ditch effort to save their home and community by turning the towers into their own “starship.” Blending realism with elements of science fiction, Gagarine is an exhilarating ode to the power of imagination and community.
CAST: Alséni Bathily, Lyna Khoudri, Jamil McCraven, Finnegan Oldfield
In Competition: Narrative Feature
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