Everything Else Matters

Anna, an architect from St. Petersburg, uncovers her great-grandfather's diary in the family archive — he was an engineer on a project that irrevocably altered the Siberian landscape in the 1930s. Her research becomes a journey to the century's abandoned construction sites, where concrete giants are slowly being reclaimed by the taiga. Simultaneously, the director documents the lives of modern residents in villages that grew around these industrial relics. Their daily routines — fishing beneath the pillars of a ghost bridge, children playing in the shadow of an unfinished hydroelectric plant — become a living commentary on the ideas of progress. The film avoids grand conclusions, allowing the camera to linger on cracks in the concrete and the faces of people whose fates are intertwined with these monuments to utopia.