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City. Climate. Sustainability, 2025. Mic Thiemann ja ARTE. Each part is just under 30 minutes long.
ARTE is a European company that operates almost entirely with public funds and produces cultural content for television. The name comes from the French words Association relative à la télévision européenne. ARTE was founded in 1992.
The production includes, among others, factual programs, concert and event recordings, and more spectacular and shorter cultural documentaries. The channel also offers feature films. ARTE content can also be viewed on a home television with an Internet connection. The languages are English, French, German, Spanish, Polish and Italian.
Ark Rex 2025 has chosen to present the English version of the current series City. Climate. Sustainability. to the public.
The program series has four episodes, each about half an hour long. They tell the story of how different European countries and cities are responding to the challenges to our environment and climate. The selection includes experiments and implementations of many kinds and scales, the actual environmental impacts of which vary. Some cities are far ahead of others, but due to the size of Europe, the location of the different countries on the continent, the nature and history of the capitals, and their own politics at the time, each city has chosen its own manner of adapting to the situation.
The critical audience’s task is, in turn, to assess what is most successful or what may not be applicable or copied as such, at least in their own locations and latitudes.
The four parts of the series, in order of presentation, cover the following countries: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Germany, Spain, France.
ARTE is a European company that operates almost entirely with public funds and produces cultural content for television. The name comes from the French words Association relative à la télévision européenne. ARTE was founded in 1992.
The production includes, among others, factual programs, concert and event recordings, and more spectacular and shorter cultural documentaries. The channel also offers feature films. ARTE content can also be viewed on a home television with an Internet connection. The languages are English, French, German, Spanish, Polish and Italian.
Ark Rex 2025 has chosen to present the English version of the current series City. Climate. Sustainability. to the public.
The program series has four episodes, each about half an hour long. They tell the story of how different European countries and cities are responding to the challenges to our environment and climate. The selection includes experiments and implementations of many kinds and scales, the actual environmental impacts of which vary. Some cities are far ahead of others, but due to the size of Europe, the location of the different countries on the continent, the nature and history of the capitals, and their own politics at the time, each city has chosen its own manner of adapting to the situation.
The critical audience’s task is, in turn, to assess what is most successful or what may not be applicable or copied as such, at least in their own locations and latitudes.
The four parts of the series, in order of presentation, cover the following countries: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Germany, Spain, France.
Architecton, 2024. Victor Kossakovsky. 98 min.
The film, in its own manner, attempts to make all of us, and especially builders, architects and engineers, think about several fundamental things — and about what we do with the oil drilled from the depths of the earth, or with the coal or the minerals that are mined. How does our way of using them get into the atmosphere and the air we breathe, and how and for whose benefit are the energy sources used? For ever more batteries? In gadgets and systems that require ever more energy and, possibly, will even more enslave us. Or: to make some more money, but for very few of us?
Read more →
The film, in its own manner, attempts to make all of us, and especially builders, architects and engineers, think about several fundamental things — and about what we do with the oil drilled from the depths of the earth, or with the coal or the minerals that are mined. How does our way of using them get into the atmosphere and the air we breathe, and how and for whose benefit are the energy sources used? For ever more batteries? In gadgets and systems that require ever more energy and, possibly, will even more enslave us. Or: to make some more money, but for very few of us?
Read more →
Greina, 2024. Patrick Thurston ja Aron Nick. 72 min.
As an architect, Patrick Thurston is in his own way self-taught, although he has received a wide range of training. He has his own architectural office in Bern and has also given lectures in Finland. He is particularly well known to connoisseurs and friends of wooden architecture.
He has also written books, and one of his roles is that of a filmmaker. He is also the son of an architect. His father, Bryan Cyril Thurston, who has Scottish roots, is both an architect and an artist. He can also be called a civic activist with good reason.
The film Greina tells the story of his father’s influence in preserving a unique, high-mountain pass as an unbuilt, peaceful paradise. When architect father Thurston first visited Greina, what he saw was only the fantastic nature and scenery. Here and there were some sheep and shepherds. The place made a profound impression on him, and the news of the pending power plant project did not leave him alone.
An architect can also participate in the defence and protection of absolute untouched beauty, and specifically paradisiacal beauty. He or she can do so as a civic activist and, above all, through art and carefully planned and considered influence. An architect’s education can also guarantee surprising capabilities for planning action strategies and their careful and considered implementation.
The film is also a story about a father and son, and there are some genuinely endearing moments — like the one where the men sketch each other. The father’s red socks and Mediterranean blue spectacle frames add an edginess to the older man’s appearance — it’s easy to like this architect.
Greina is, even today, a peaceful and incredibly beautiful mountain plateau located between Ticino and Graubünden in Switzerland, which became widely known in Switzerland in the 1970s. Some people had plans for it, big, big plans.
Bryan Cyril Thurston fought and campaigned for about two decades to protect the magical place and its surroundings. He did it through art and, in his own way, through targeted, edgy and determined art activism.
Patrick’s father often repeated the following sentence: "Only poetry can save Greina." When he was younger, Patrick didn’t really understand it, but with his recent film, he wanted to show how strong and enduring such an idea can be in practice; his father’s actions finally turned the minds and heads of the Swiss people towards preserving this paradise.
Gion A. Caminada, an architect and professor from the nearby mountain village of Vrin, known and admired even in Finland for his wooden architecture, is also interviewed in the film. The landscapes, as well as the architect’s father’s own home and studio, are also delightful.
As an architect, Patrick Thurston is in his own way self-taught, although he has received a wide range of training. He has his own architectural office in Bern and has also given lectures in Finland. He is particularly well known to connoisseurs and friends of wooden architecture.
He has also written books, and one of his roles is that of a filmmaker. He is also the son of an architect. His father, Bryan Cyril Thurston, who has Scottish roots, is both an architect and an artist. He can also be called a civic activist with good reason.
The film Greina tells the story of his father’s influence in preserving a unique, high-mountain pass as an unbuilt, peaceful paradise. When architect father Thurston first visited Greina, what he saw was only the fantastic nature and scenery. Here and there were some sheep and shepherds. The place made a profound impression on him, and the news of the pending power plant project did not leave him alone.
An architect can also participate in the defence and protection of absolute untouched beauty, and specifically paradisiacal beauty. He or she can do so as a civic activist and, above all, through art and carefully planned and considered influence. An architect’s education can also guarantee surprising capabilities for planning action strategies and their careful and considered implementation.
The film is also a story about a father and son, and there are some genuinely endearing moments — like the one where the men sketch each other. The father’s red socks and Mediterranean blue spectacle frames add an edginess to the older man’s appearance — it’s easy to like this architect.
Greina is, even today, a peaceful and incredibly beautiful mountain plateau located between Ticino and Graubünden in Switzerland, which became widely known in Switzerland in the 1970s. Some people had plans for it, big, big plans.
Bryan Cyril Thurston fought and campaigned for about two decades to protect the magical place and its surroundings. He did it through art and, in his own way, through targeted, edgy and determined art activism.
Patrick’s father often repeated the following sentence: "Only poetry can save Greina." When he was younger, Patrick didn’t really understand it, but with his recent film, he wanted to show how strong and enduring such an idea can be in practice; his father’s actions finally turned the minds and heads of the Swiss people towards preserving this paradise.
Gion A. Caminada, an architect and professor from the nearby mountain village of Vrin, known and admired even in Finland for his wooden architecture, is also interviewed in the film. The landscapes, as well as the architect’s father’s own home and studio, are also delightful.
Antti Lovag – Bird of Paradise, 2013. Kathrin Pitterling. 66 min.
Architect Thomas Willemeit's mother had filmed television architecture programs for her son with a regular film camera. One of them was about an architect named Antti Lovag, who was Finnish-born on his mother's side, and whose own architectural thinking differed greatly from the usual. Inspired by the film clip he saw, Willemeit unexpectedly went to southern France and worked on the construction site of a very special building. Later, he became a real architect who, together with two colleagues, Lars Krückeberg and Wolfram Putz, founded an architectural firm called Graft, which now operates from Berlin and even in California.
The film follows Willemeit's journey to the architect's home on the French Riviera. We also visit the unique villas, which consist of smaller or larger, on-site moulded and interconnected bubble-like sections, offering stunning views of the sparkling blue Mediterranean Sea.
Willemeit wanted to meet Lovag, who had made a great impression on him, once again, now that he was old. The film crew has visited with him, among other places, a place called Théoule-sur-Mer, but also Lovag's first experimental house in Tourette sur Loup, where he died in 2014. The luxurious Bubble Palace, or Palais Bulles, designed by Lovag, was originally built for an industrialist named Pierre Bernard. Later it belonged to Pierre Cardin himself, the famous French fashion designer. After Cardin's death, the large villa was for sale and the asking price was over 300 million euros. Numerous fashion shoots have been organised in the Palais Bulles, and scenes for some films have been shot there.
Architecture always needs dissidents – for example, in Finland, people like Aino and Alvar and Elissa Aalto, Raili and Reima Pietilä, or Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen, who follow their own paths. Lovag, who has a very special background, is in some ways parallel to their otherness or progressiveness, but somehow much more original.
The film takes us to Lovag and his family's home and yard, where there are all kinds of test pieces and a workshop with a large amount of stuff. Some of the special curves of the large pieces even resemble the shapes of the pieces that bring light into the yard of the Amos Rex Museum. When Willemeit showed photographs from the filming locations in Berlin in 2024, there was a certain similarity to the shapes of the yard cover designed by JKMM. That surprising moment decided, in addition to Antti Lovagi's special quality and origin, the choice of the film for the 2025 festival program.
The film is spoken in French, English and German. Lovag did not live in Finland but studied in Sweden after the war. He is not an architect who received his education in technical universities. Instead, he worked like a medieval master - with workshops, experiments and assistants. Lovag called himself a "habitologist", who wanted to create unique and habitable spaces. The rectangular coordinate system is foreign to him. He was even way ahead of his time in recycling, inventing and reusing building materials.
Lovag hasn't had many clients. His principle has been: " I don't know yet what the building will be like, and I don't know how long the construction will take. I don't even know how much it will cost."
Architect Thomas Willemeit's mother had filmed television architecture programs for her son with a regular film camera. One of them was about an architect named Antti Lovag, who was Finnish-born on his mother's side, and whose own architectural thinking differed greatly from the usual. Inspired by the film clip he saw, Willemeit unexpectedly went to southern France and worked on the construction site of a very special building. Later, he became a real architect who, together with two colleagues, Lars Krückeberg and Wolfram Putz, founded an architectural firm called Graft, which now operates from Berlin and even in California.
The film follows Willemeit's journey to the architect's home on the French Riviera. We also visit the unique villas, which consist of smaller or larger, on-site moulded and interconnected bubble-like sections, offering stunning views of the sparkling blue Mediterranean Sea.
Willemeit wanted to meet Lovag, who had made a great impression on him, once again, now that he was old. The film crew has visited with him, among other places, a place called Théoule-sur-Mer, but also Lovag's first experimental house in Tourette sur Loup, where he died in 2014. The luxurious Bubble Palace, or Palais Bulles, designed by Lovag, was originally built for an industrialist named Pierre Bernard. Later it belonged to Pierre Cardin himself, the famous French fashion designer. After Cardin's death, the large villa was for sale and the asking price was over 300 million euros. Numerous fashion shoots have been organised in the Palais Bulles, and scenes for some films have been shot there.
Architecture always needs dissidents – for example, in Finland, people like Aino and Alvar and Elissa Aalto, Raili and Reima Pietilä, or Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen, who follow their own paths. Lovag, who has a very special background, is in some ways parallel to their otherness or progressiveness, but somehow much more original.
The film takes us to Lovag and his family's home and yard, where there are all kinds of test pieces and a workshop with a large amount of stuff. Some of the special curves of the large pieces even resemble the shapes of the pieces that bring light into the yard of the Amos Rex Museum. When Willemeit showed photographs from the filming locations in Berlin in 2024, there was a certain similarity to the shapes of the yard cover designed by JKMM. That surprising moment decided, in addition to Antti Lovagi's special quality and origin, the choice of the film for the 2025 festival program.
The film is spoken in French, English and German. Lovag did not live in Finland but studied in Sweden after the war. He is not an architect who received his education in technical universities. Instead, he worked like a medieval master - with workshops, experiments and assistants. Lovag called himself a "habitologist", who wanted to create unique and habitable spaces. The rectangular coordinate system is foreign to him. He was even way ahead of his time in recycling, inventing and reusing building materials.
Lovag hasn't had many clients. His principle has been: " I don't know yet what the building will be like, and I don't know how long the construction will take. I don't even know how much it will cost."
E.1027 - Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea, 2024. Beatrice Minger ja Christoph Schaub. 90 min.
In Cap Martin on the French Riviera, there is a unique white villa. It is not just any roadside address. Instead, the letter E. and the four figures hide a story of love between two people. Completed in 1929, the name of the villa is a combination of the initials of these people's names.
Eileen Gray was a designer born into a noble Irish family and an exceptionally skilled architect. The other person is the Romanian-born architect and journalist Jean Badovici. He was particularly known as an advocate of avant-garde architecture. That is: a new architecture that was at the forefront of the time; he was known as a publisher of architectural magazines.
The airy and, at the same time, confusingly beautiful villa, which was suitable for Gray and Badovici to live and work together, would not exist without the encounter of these two. The villa is, as it were, the concrete fulfilment of this human relationship and love. Later, the famous architect Le Corbusier, who knew Badovici well, even sought to “own” the villa, as if it had been a product of his own office. They both had participated in the famous CIAM meeting, where the international key figures in architecture and design of the time travelled together by steamship from Marseille to Athens.
Swiss screenwriter-director-actor duo Beatrice Minger and Christoph Schaub, along with their actors, have conjured up a story about the villa that combines both original photo and film material and events imagined and acted out in the villa itself in the 1920s and 30s and after World War II. Some of the scenes in the film are filmed as if in the spaces designed and lived in by Eileen Gray, but those scenes take place on a large stage. We even get a glimpse of the real Eileen at her home in Paris, where, having withdrawn from the public eye and reached an advanced age, she still draws and thinks about new objects. Like many artists, designers and architects, she could never really stop working.
The film is beautiful and skilfully scripted. The whole is built on archive material and, above all, based on spoken and written texts.
The landscapes are eye-catching because that is what the Côte d'Azur has been and still is. It was not until the 1930s that it became a luxurious vacation and residence for the wealthy. Villa E.1027 had been built several years before that.
It was not until 1968 that photographs of it were published, with Eileen Gray also being credited as its true architect. The film also discusses the ownership of a building designed by a talented woman in the names of others.
The film also beautifully tells the story of how beautiful, purposeful and environmentally friendly buildings modernism has been able to produce after World War I, and as a completely new way of thinking and doing, started to shape the new era and its life. Beauty or the pursuit of beauty is by no means tied to style.
The film premiered in the fall of 2023. Director Christoph Schaub, also known for his fiction films, visited the Ark Rex Architectural Film Festival in 2021, where the breathtakingly beautiful film The Architecture of Infinity, directed by him, was screened.
In Cap Martin on the French Riviera, there is a unique white villa. It is not just any roadside address. Instead, the letter E. and the four figures hide a story of love between two people. Completed in 1929, the name of the villa is a combination of the initials of these people's names.
Eileen Gray was a designer born into a noble Irish family and an exceptionally skilled architect. The other person is the Romanian-born architect and journalist Jean Badovici. He was particularly known as an advocate of avant-garde architecture. That is: a new architecture that was at the forefront of the time; he was known as a publisher of architectural magazines.
The airy and, at the same time, confusingly beautiful villa, which was suitable for Gray and Badovici to live and work together, would not exist without the encounter of these two. The villa is, as it were, the concrete fulfilment of this human relationship and love. Later, the famous architect Le Corbusier, who knew Badovici well, even sought to “own” the villa, as if it had been a product of his own office. They both had participated in the famous CIAM meeting, where the international key figures in architecture and design of the time travelled together by steamship from Marseille to Athens.
Swiss screenwriter-director-actor duo Beatrice Minger and Christoph Schaub, along with their actors, have conjured up a story about the villa that combines both original photo and film material and events imagined and acted out in the villa itself in the 1920s and 30s and after World War II. Some of the scenes in the film are filmed as if in the spaces designed and lived in by Eileen Gray, but those scenes take place on a large stage. We even get a glimpse of the real Eileen at her home in Paris, where, having withdrawn from the public eye and reached an advanced age, she still draws and thinks about new objects. Like many artists, designers and architects, she could never really stop working.
The film is beautiful and skilfully scripted. The whole is built on archive material and, above all, based on spoken and written texts.
The landscapes are eye-catching because that is what the Côte d'Azur has been and still is. It was not until the 1930s that it became a luxurious vacation and residence for the wealthy. Villa E.1027 had been built several years before that.
It was not until 1968 that photographs of it were published, with Eileen Gray also being credited as its true architect. The film also discusses the ownership of a building designed by a talented woman in the names of others.
The film also beautifully tells the story of how beautiful, purposeful and environmentally friendly buildings modernism has been able to produce after World War I, and as a completely new way of thinking and doing, started to shape the new era and its life. Beauty or the pursuit of beauty is by no means tied to style.
The film premiered in the fall of 2023. Director Christoph Schaub, also known for his fiction films, visited the Ark Rex Architectural Film Festival in 2021, where the breathtakingly beautiful film The Architecture of Infinity, directed by him, was screened.
The Loop of the Nibelung, 2020. Simon Steen-Andersen. 37 min.
A truly special work, commissioned for the Bayreuth Wagner Festival in 2020 and created by the famous composer and professor, plus performance artist Simon Steen-Andersen, will certainly get your eyes and ears wide open.
With the help of a special film, we get a peek inside the Festspielhaus, built for the world-famous festive event, and above all, behind the thick and well-worn curtain. We even climb up to the roof.
The Festspielhaus is the venue for the operas of composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883), for which the special Wagner festival building was built. It was completed in 1879, and the architect was Otto Brückwald.
As the film progresses, we meet both musicians from the opera house and famous opera singers. There is also a squeaky toy plus a dog running with the composer, who skilfully manoeuvres a ball-headed microphone. The work features recordings from opera stars of the past and songs by contemporary ones. Included are exciting juxtapositions of old black and white mixed with newly filmed material, plus other tricks.
The fact that we are backstage and behind the curtain, running around with the cameraman Peter Tinning, and Simon, the professor and creator of this special piece of work, who are both dexterously moving around the production part of the building. The film is parallel to how a finished building of any kind also requires a lot of behind-the-scenes activity before it is completed. To commission, design and construct a work of architecture requires an enormous desire and ability to solve problems – but above all, skilled and responsible builders. Operas also require - in addition to a composer and a libretto - a functioning building, a highly competent production department and fantastic musicians and soloists. And above all, an opera house or a venue suitable for highly demanding performances.
There was also a piquant coincidence behind the film's selection for the program: the festival curator had decided to drop by at a lecture and discussion event at the Berlin Akademie der Künste in the summer of 2025. She especially paid attention to Steen-Andersen, who was showing a short clip from this film. She approached him, looked him in the eye, introduced herself, and they exchanged an old-fashioned handshake. Later, the composer sent her the whole film for us to have a closer look at.
In the context of art and culture – and architecture – many things and events may originate from the right kind of people just being in the same place and at the right moment.
A truly special work, commissioned for the Bayreuth Wagner Festival in 2020 and created by the famous composer and professor, plus performance artist Simon Steen-Andersen, will certainly get your eyes and ears wide open.
With the help of a special film, we get a peek inside the Festspielhaus, built for the world-famous festive event, and above all, behind the thick and well-worn curtain. We even climb up to the roof.
The Festspielhaus is the venue for the operas of composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883), for which the special Wagner festival building was built. It was completed in 1879, and the architect was Otto Brückwald.
As the film progresses, we meet both musicians from the opera house and famous opera singers. There is also a squeaky toy plus a dog running with the composer, who skilfully manoeuvres a ball-headed microphone. The work features recordings from opera stars of the past and songs by contemporary ones. Included are exciting juxtapositions of old black and white mixed with newly filmed material, plus other tricks.
The fact that we are backstage and behind the curtain, running around with the cameraman Peter Tinning, and Simon, the professor and creator of this special piece of work, who are both dexterously moving around the production part of the building. The film is parallel to how a finished building of any kind also requires a lot of behind-the-scenes activity before it is completed. To commission, design and construct a work of architecture requires an enormous desire and ability to solve problems – but above all, skilled and responsible builders. Operas also require - in addition to a composer and a libretto - a functioning building, a highly competent production department and fantastic musicians and soloists. And above all, an opera house or a venue suitable for highly demanding performances.
There was also a piquant coincidence behind the film's selection for the program: the festival curator had decided to drop by at a lecture and discussion event at the Berlin Akademie der Künste in the summer of 2025. She especially paid attention to Steen-Andersen, who was showing a short clip from this film. She approached him, looked him in the eye, introduced herself, and they exchanged an old-fashioned handshake. Later, the composer sent her the whole film for us to have a closer look at.
In the context of art and culture – and architecture – many things and events may originate from the right kind of people just being in the same place and at the right moment.
Villa Tugenhat, 2024. Jiří Lenhart. 11 min.
One of many modernist private houses, Villa Tugendhat, designed by architect Mies van der Rohe for Greta and Fritz Tugendhat and completed in 1929–30, can be found in the city of Brno, Czech Republic. The rather large and incredibly modern building has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001.
In the short film, we are allowed to move freely inside the building from room to room and floor to floor. We also hear van der Rohe himself describing the building or the principles behind its design. The interesting creature in the film is a crystal-clear glass ball, which we can follow to slide from room to room and explore the secrets of the house.
The short film is a demonstration of how modernist architecture, in its environment and especially with extremely carefully thought-out details and carefully studied solutions, can be enchantingly beautiful.
One of many modernist private houses, Villa Tugendhat, designed by architect Mies van der Rohe for Greta and Fritz Tugendhat and completed in 1929–30, can be found in the city of Brno, Czech Republic. The rather large and incredibly modern building has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001.
In the short film, we are allowed to move freely inside the building from room to room and floor to floor. We also hear van der Rohe himself describing the building or the principles behind its design. The interesting creature in the film is a crystal-clear glass ball, which we can follow to slide from room to room and explore the secrets of the house.
The short film is a demonstration of how modernist architecture, in its environment and especially with extremely carefully thought-out details and carefully studied solutions, can be enchantingly beautiful.
Space of Becoming, 2025. Rebeka Bratož Gornik. 12 min.
«A space that was once intended as a home and refuge for the elderly is transformed into a stage of remembrance, where movement reveals what endures – and what disappears.»
In 1992, just three months after its completion, Sarajevo's Dom Penzionera, the Pensioners' House – a vibrant and visionary architectural masterpiece designed by Gvozden Dragan Bijedić and Mladen Gvozden – was destroyed by the war. Designed as a place of residence for the elderly in their final years, the building never had the chance of opening its doors. Once awarded Yugoslavia’s most prestigious architectural award, namely the Borba Award, the building now stands as a silent witness to its never-fulfilled purpose and the devastating effects of war.
This film re-examines space and time through a contemporary lens, using dance and movement as its mediums to explore broader themes of disappearance, transformation, and contested urban memory. Set in the ruins of a half-destroyed building, the film explores the shifting tensions between tradition and gentrification, care and financial capital, and presence and absence.
The short film is a unique hybrid: an art film / a dance film / a creative documentary. This film combines performative choreography with architectural research and documentary roots through artistic expression. Instead of using a traditional narrative, this film uses visual, sound, spatial and body language, all of which together form a hallmark of an essayistic film.
«A space that was once intended as a home and refuge for the elderly is transformed into a stage of remembrance, where movement reveals what endures – and what disappears.»
In 1992, just three months after its completion, Sarajevo's Dom Penzionera, the Pensioners' House – a vibrant and visionary architectural masterpiece designed by Gvozden Dragan Bijedić and Mladen Gvozden – was destroyed by the war. Designed as a place of residence for the elderly in their final years, the building never had the chance of opening its doors. Once awarded Yugoslavia’s most prestigious architectural award, namely the Borba Award, the building now stands as a silent witness to its never-fulfilled purpose and the devastating effects of war.
This film re-examines space and time through a contemporary lens, using dance and movement as its mediums to explore broader themes of disappearance, transformation, and contested urban memory. Set in the ruins of a half-destroyed building, the film explores the shifting tensions between tradition and gentrification, care and financial capital, and presence and absence.
The short film is a unique hybrid: an art film / a dance film / a creative documentary. This film combines performative choreography with architectural research and documentary roots through artistic expression. Instead of using a traditional narrative, this film uses visual, sound, spatial and body language, all of which together form a hallmark of an essayistic film.
Skin of Glass, 2023. Denise Zmekhol. 90 min.
The relatively recent and award-winning film Skin of Glass by the director who has moved to California, beautifully tells the story of the daughter and father. Denise lost her sunny and talented architect father, who had also supported her daughter, at the age of 14. The film is like a journey to find out what has happened to her former homeland and the shining office building designed by her father. She had heard that it had recently been taken over by entire homeless families. Before that, the building had also been considered and designed for a new and dynamic use by younger architects.
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The relatively recent and award-winning film Skin of Glass by the director who has moved to California, beautifully tells the story of the daughter and father. Denise lost her sunny and talented architect father, who had also supported her daughter, at the age of 14. The film is like a journey to find out what has happened to her former homeland and the shining office building designed by her father. She had heard that it had recently been taken over by entire homeless families. Before that, the building had also been considered and designed for a new and dynamic use by younger architects.
Read more →
The Great Arch, 2025. Stéphane Demoustier. 105 min.
Many films about architects have the habit of presenting the architect as a hero and genius working alone, possibly wearing a black polo shirt.
The work of architects is not necessarily focused on a single hero, as, for instance, films like The Fountainhead (1949) or The Brutalist (2024) suggest. The work of architects, when understood correctly, is often full of adversity. Architects can have highly demanding and sometimes even capricious clients, honest or less honest collaborators, as well as supporters and opponents. Nowadays, there even exists a vocal audience on social media, who, with the slightest justification, even throw out manipulated opinions — those, too, loudly either for or against.
In Finland, the result of an open and public international architectural competition for a new Museum of Architecture and Design in Helsinki was announced in September 2025. The authors of the works were only revealed when the envelopes were opened, meaning that even the works that made it to the top five have been judged without the authors being known. This time, the competition was won by a well-known Finnish architectural firm JKMM.
The recent French film L’Inconnu de la Grande Arche — The Great Arch — tells the story of both a significant French architectural competition and the exceptionally confusing situation after opening the envelope of the winning proposal. It is also a story about an ambitious president and a persistent Danish architect who, as an artist who rose from obscurity, stubbornly wanted to keep his own head.
Architect Otto von Spreckelsen, who surprisingly won the competition, was commissioned to design a hundred-meter-plus-high cube-shaped "arch" at the end of the axis of the famous Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris. It was also one of President François Mitterrand’s most significant public building projects. The district where the large building is now located is called La Défense.
The impressive film presents the Danish architect as headstrong and strong-willed, but the story also takes us to a large design office where things happen on drawing boards. No architect draws large buildings on napkins alone; a team of fellow architects, assistants, engineers, material suppliers and builders are also needed.
The film has received praise at the Cannes Film Festival and is a genuine full-length fiction film included in the Ark Rex 2025 program. The script is based on true events, which have been spiced up by, among other things, writing von Spreckelsen’s wife into the script. The film team has brilliantly used the possibilities offered by contemporary technology: even though the large building was completed decades ago, scenes have been conjured up on the big screen where we enter an unfinished construction site. La Grande Arche was completed in honour of the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution in 1989 — the cameras of this film crew could not have been there in the late eighties.
While other films in the festival touch on marble quarries, architectural competitions, or the setbacks that sometimes severely hinder the progress of projects — including politics — this film fits perfectly into the overall theme of the festival.
Many films about architects have the habit of presenting the architect as a hero and genius working alone, possibly wearing a black polo shirt.
The work of architects is not necessarily focused on a single hero, as, for instance, films like The Fountainhead (1949) or The Brutalist (2024) suggest. The work of architects, when understood correctly, is often full of adversity. Architects can have highly demanding and sometimes even capricious clients, honest or less honest collaborators, as well as supporters and opponents. Nowadays, there even exists a vocal audience on social media, who, with the slightest justification, even throw out manipulated opinions — those, too, loudly either for or against.
In Finland, the result of an open and public international architectural competition for a new Museum of Architecture and Design in Helsinki was announced in September 2025. The authors of the works were only revealed when the envelopes were opened, meaning that even the works that made it to the top five have been judged without the authors being known. This time, the competition was won by a well-known Finnish architectural firm JKMM.
The recent French film L’Inconnu de la Grande Arche — The Great Arch — tells the story of both a significant French architectural competition and the exceptionally confusing situation after opening the envelope of the winning proposal. It is also a story about an ambitious president and a persistent Danish architect who, as an artist who rose from obscurity, stubbornly wanted to keep his own head.
Architect Otto von Spreckelsen, who surprisingly won the competition, was commissioned to design a hundred-meter-plus-high cube-shaped "arch" at the end of the axis of the famous Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris. It was also one of President François Mitterrand’s most significant public building projects. The district where the large building is now located is called La Défense.
The impressive film presents the Danish architect as headstrong and strong-willed, but the story also takes us to a large design office where things happen on drawing boards. No architect draws large buildings on napkins alone; a team of fellow architects, assistants, engineers, material suppliers and builders are also needed.
The film has received praise at the Cannes Film Festival and is a genuine full-length fiction film included in the Ark Rex 2025 program. The script is based on true events, which have been spiced up by, among other things, writing von Spreckelsen’s wife into the script. The film team has brilliantly used the possibilities offered by contemporary technology: even though the large building was completed decades ago, scenes have been conjured up on the big screen where we enter an unfinished construction site. La Grande Arche was completed in honour of the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution in 1989 — the cameras of this film crew could not have been there in the late eighties.
While other films in the festival touch on marble quarries, architectural competitions, or the setbacks that sometimes severely hinder the progress of projects — including politics — this film fits perfectly into the overall theme of the festival.
The Hall, 2024. Hans Christian Post. 2024. 30 min.
Hans Christian Post, who is also well known to the audience of Ark Rex from earlier years, writes about his recent film as follows:
« Waves crash against the concrete shell of the building. Water can now seep in, pooling on the floor in front of the centuries-old wooden ships. Architects call the building a Brutalist masterpiece, politicians label it a culturally elitist monument, and in 2018, the Minister of Culture delisted the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde.
Which stories do we choose to immortalise in stone? How do we distinguish between what is worth preserving and what is not? And is it out of respect for history, or is there a deeper impulse at play when we preserve, a need to anchor our fleeting existence in something more enduring? »
The film is highly topical in that it helps us better understand the value and significance of a museum building like this, now that the conditions have changed radically since the building was completed (architect Erik Christian Sørensen, 1969). Today, the admired building is – due to changed circumstances – located too close to the rising sea level, which can be dangerous to the precious original vessels.
The museum, with its generous and dramatic interior and built for Viking ships found on Danish soil and located in Roskilde, is now unsuitable for valuable and delicate museum objects.
What to do? A completely new building (Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects) has been chosen as the new location for the ships, according to the proposal that won the architectural competition. It has been decided to preserve and adapt the original Viking ship museum located on the shore for a new use. It will not be demolished. The changes do not seek to do unnecessary harm to the spatial qualities of the original building from the sixties.
The filmmaker also respects the original building. The people who appear in it and analyse the building from different positions express the same thing. The film was completed in 2024. The questions it raises are also relevant in Finland.
Hans Christian Post, who is also well known to the audience of Ark Rex from earlier years, writes about his recent film as follows:
« Waves crash against the concrete shell of the building. Water can now seep in, pooling on the floor in front of the centuries-old wooden ships. Architects call the building a Brutalist masterpiece, politicians label it a culturally elitist monument, and in 2018, the Minister of Culture delisted the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde.
Which stories do we choose to immortalise in stone? How do we distinguish between what is worth preserving and what is not? And is it out of respect for history, or is there a deeper impulse at play when we preserve, a need to anchor our fleeting existence in something more enduring? »
The film is highly topical in that it helps us better understand the value and significance of a museum building like this, now that the conditions have changed radically since the building was completed (architect Erik Christian Sørensen, 1969). Today, the admired building is – due to changed circumstances – located too close to the rising sea level, which can be dangerous to the precious original vessels.
The museum, with its generous and dramatic interior and built for Viking ships found on Danish soil and located in Roskilde, is now unsuitable for valuable and delicate museum objects.
What to do? A completely new building (Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects) has been chosen as the new location for the ships, according to the proposal that won the architectural competition. It has been decided to preserve and adapt the original Viking ship museum located on the shore for a new use. It will not be demolished. The changes do not seek to do unnecessary harm to the spatial qualities of the original building from the sixties.
The filmmaker also respects the original building. The people who appear in it and analyse the building from different positions express the same thing. The film was completed in 2024. The questions it raises are also relevant in Finland.
bauhaus forever, 2025. Nico Weber. 95 min.
A film about a house that doesn’t exist. A film about an archive without a building or a home. A school that was much more than a school. It was the most influential art school of the 20th century, reshaping and changing art, design and life, and which still refuses to cease to exist.
Read more →
A film about a house that doesn’t exist. A film about an archive without a building or a home. A school that was much more than a school. It was the most influential art school of the 20th century, reshaping and changing art, design and life, and which still refuses to cease to exist.
Read more →
