Co-directed by Fanny Liatard and Jeremy Trouilh with a magical-realist accent on the cross-cultural makeup of the Paris underclasses, Gagarine casts a wistful spell that should be much appreciated by international cinephiles (and, potentially, French-language class attendees).
Gagarine Towers is an aging Paris government-subsidized housing project, named in honor of pioneering cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. In the 21st century, however, the place is in danger of being torn down by socialism's new generation of faceless bureaucrats. Young Yuri (Alseni Bathiliy), of French-African descent, is a lifelong resident of the 365-apartment block and loves its multi-cultural community of all ages and nations. Space-minded, he coordinates a mass eclipse-viewing for the neighborhood. Yuri and cohorts even undertake potentially dangerous DIY repairs of Gagarine's infrastructure to rescue the building from demolition orders but in vain.
As tenants are forced out, some like Yuri (whose mother abandoned him to pursue her love affair with a new man) have no place to relocate. Yuri, inspired by Russian space-station projects, stays alone on the seventh floor, rigging suites with his own hydroponics gardens, plumbing, and electronics (meanwhile the engineers preparing the place for destruction come to resemble astronauts themselves, in their HAZMAT suits). Only a few close friends know Yuri is still living in the building, as zero hour approaches.
The feature was inspired by a 2015 nonfiction short subject by the same filmmakers about the demise of a similar Paris housing project, although this re-imagining of the material takes viewers into the more exotic territory wherein one is unsure whether what we are seeing is literal or Yuri's hopeful fantasies—a limitless cosmos disguising his disenfranchised status in a doomed settlement, one christened after a hero of the Soviet peoples' utopia promised by the long-gone USSR.
Gagarine is one of a handful of European features that mix melodrama with ruminations on public architecture and the meaning of community (films by Mike Newel such as Stormy Monday and Close My Eyes by Stephen Poliakoff also being prominent in the space-force fleet). It deserves to find a recommended launch pad on international cinema library shelves in public libraries.