What if a museum could become a world of its own? The films featured in this screening explore how museums can represent the world in miniature while their collections demonstrate the utopian potential of art.

Russian Ark, directed by Aleksandr Sokurov, is an extraordinary ninety-minute masterpiece shot in a single, continuous take through the State Hermitage Museum in the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. The film follows a ghostly narrator on his journey through the museum, where he encounters real and fictional characters across three centuries of Russian history.

Living in their secluded apartment in Moscow, Nina and Ely Bielutin have invented a world where deception and fiction are inseparable from truth and reality. Bielutin–In the Garden of Time, directed by Clément Cogitore, tells the epic story of their collection, which comprises hundreds of works by Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Rubens, among others.

Aleksandr Sokurov (b. 1951, Russia) enrolled in the History Department of Gorky University. During his studies, he worked as a production assistant in television and produced his first television programmes at the age of nineteen. His first debut feature, The Lonely Voice of Man (1979), earned the approval of his mentor and friend Andrei Tarkovsky. His  notable works include Russian Ark (2002) and Faust (2011), which won the Golden Lion, the top prize at the Venice Film Festival.

Clément Cogitore (b. 1983, France) studied at Le Fresnoy, the French National Studio of Contemporary Art. Cogitore developed his practice at the crossroads of contemporary art and cinema. He often combines film, video, installations, and photographs to question the modalities of cohabitation between humankind and its images and representations. In 2018, he was awarded the prestigious Marcel Duchamp Prize for Contemporary Art. Since then, he has taught at the École des Beaux Arts de Paris.