Cité Gagarine was a Soviet-constructed housing project built in France in 1963 and named after cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.  The complex would eventually come to house many immigrants from Europe to France, until its condemnation in 2019 and subsequent 16-month long demolition.  Gagarine is a touching eulogy of a film that follows Youri (Alséni Bathily), a young man who has lived in Gagarine his entire life and has taken it as his personal mission to save the complex by repairing the building himself.  

Written and directed by Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh with Benjamin Charbit assisting on the page, Cohen Media Group released the 98-minute drama after its bow at Cannes back in 2020 as part of the First Features section. Interweaving archival footage with scenes of fantasy, Gagarine is a very poignant and lyrical film. While the script expects audiences to have some prior knowledge of the situation making for a potentially rough first act for the uninitiated, as it rounds into the second act we are familiar with the stakes and along for the ride. 

Bathily, in a breakout role, carries the film as the camera often holds tight on his face as he tries to do his best not to lose his home, and also the homes of his friends and neighbors. It is an incredible burden for anyone, and the young actor handles the stress of the role quite well. There is a deep care he brings to the role of Youri who, in other hands could come off as a standoffish character, almost bullheaded in his fool’s errand. Not only does Bathily balance the demands of the role as a defacto maintenance tech, but there is also a running subplot where he likens his care of the building to being an astronaut taking care of his ship in orbit; the last man standing. 

Youri’s fantasy occupies much of the second half of the film as it shows the young man living alone in the sprawling complex as he hides away from the demolition crews. In the first act, the camera work had some flourishes of weightlessness about it to evoke the feel as if Gagarine really was a spacecraft floating in the desolate great beyond, but here, especially when we see how Youri has rendered the empty seventh floor into his own makeshift satellite encampment, the effect really hits home. He has repurposed all sorts of left-over items from the various apartments and waste from the demolition crew, and from those forgotten and left behind items he has built a sanctuary. In a way, it can be seen as self-validation of his own worth, having been left behind by his own mother who, at the last minute, claims she has no room for him at her new home. Just because you have been left behind does not mean you are valueless. 

The film ends by fully embracing Youri’s fantasy in an incredibly moving way. His footsteps through the snow are reminiscent of the iconic footprints left on the surface of the moon. The camera becomes even more freewheeling and almost dizzying as his mission comes to a close. This is all presented on screen as the score by Evgueni and Sacha Galperine plays on with themes that seem to imitate Hans Zimmer’s work on Interstellar (2014), but with a homemade quality to it. It is in these scenes where the film is at its most creative as it switches back and forth from the audience of evictees reunited to watch the demolition and Youri as he makes his last-ditch effort to save his dying ship careening lonesomely in orbit. 

While Gagarine starts off by keeping the audience at a bit of a distance, it ends as a beautiful tale about enduring friendships and what it means to call a place home. The supporting cast does not always have much to do, unfortunately, but what screen time Lyna Khoudri and Jamil McCraven do occupy, they fill with pure and loving hearts. Gagarine is a strange film in how much it is trying to accomplish – not a documentary, but not a pure work of fiction, either – it walks the line quite well and while those more familiar with the actual housing project may connect to the story more immediately, the themes are universal. It is not often that a film comes along with such a unique, yet clear, delivery, but Gagarine is one such example and it creeps up on you with its simple, lighthearted opening into a powerfully cathartic finale that will linger long after the lights come up in the auditorium and we drive back to wherever we call home, and hopefully, we are a little more aware and appreciative of all we do have.