Urban Fictions, Fragile Realities – Experimental takes on two exceptional cities in Russia + Q&A

How do we perceive a city when its image is shaped by secrecy, collapse, or distant memory? Urban Fictions, Fragile Realities brings together two artfully composed films that explore exceptional cities in Russia—places where official narratives falter and personal memory, landscape, and myth take over. Though grounded in very real places—Berezniki and Zheleznogorsk—both films resist simple documentary form. Instead, they drift between fact and imagination, surface and depth, sound and silence. Neither filmmaker is Russian, but each brings a deep attentiveness to the spaces and voices they encounter, using the camera not as a tool of explanation, but of reflection.

After each film, there will be a Q&A with the director.
 

Both Ears to the Ground

Naïmé Perrette | 2021 | Frankrijk | 29’ | EN subtitles

Set in Berezniki, a city in Russia’s Ural region undermined by decades of salt mining, Both Ears to the Ground listens closely to the lives of residents navigating the literal collapse of their environment. Sinkholes—both physical and metaphorical—serve as openings into deeper questions of trust, faith, and the unseen forces that shape daily life.
 

The Radiant Screen

Ine Lamers | 2025 | NL | 47 ’ | EN subtitles

Zheleznogorsk, once a closed Soviet city built for plutonium production, remains ghostlike—shaped by its history of secrecy and isolation. In The Radiant Screen, Ine Lamers combines archival research, interviews, and a haunting visual language to explore the lingering presence of a city never meant to be seen.