A meditation on how architecture reflects our dreams and hopes, drawing on the brutalist legacy of a Balkan capital.
In 1963, Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, was destroyed in an earthquake. An international team of modernist architects, including one of the most influential architects of the postwar era, Kenzo Tange, rebuilt it in the new and fashionable brutalist style, filling the city with dozens of monumental concrete structures that catch the eye with their massive blocks and unusual proportions.
Concrete Time invites the viewer to feast their eyes on the key brutalist buildings of Skopje from every angle. Igor Ivanov Izi’s film is more than a mere architectural tour of the city; it is a meditation on time and identity. In the voiceover, the director shares the personal memories and collective hopes that these brutalist buildings—many of them now abandoned—once inspired. Today, Skopje is being filled with new buildings in a faux historical style, a situation parallel to what is happening in Russia. But the brutalist giants persist not only due to their robustness, as Ivanov points out, but also thanks to their symbolism and their promise of a future that never came. Concrete Time raises the question: if architecture can talk, what do today’s cities tell us?
The film will be screened in Macedonian with Russian subtitles.
Concrete Time
Director: Igor Ivanov Izi
North Macedonia, 2024. 56 min.
18+
