: When the dilapidated red-brick estate is slated for demolition, Youri refuses to leave. While his neighbors are relocated, he stays behind to "fix" the building, eventually transforming his apartment into a makeshift spaceship complete with oxygen-supplying greenhouses and Morse code communication systems.
: The film stars newcomer Alséni Bathily as Youri, a 16-year-old science wiz named after the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin—the same man who inaugurated the housing complex in 1963.
The 2020 French film , directed by Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh, is a poignant, magical realist drama that transforms a gritty Parisian housing project into a literal and figurative starship. Shot on location just before the real-life demolition of the Cité Gagarine in Ivry-sur-Seine, the film serves as both a fictional coming-of-age story and a spectral documentary of a community on the brink of erasure. Story and Themes
: Critics from RogerEbert.com and The Guardian highlight the film's unique blend of social realism and "gravity-defying" fantasy, which provides a soulful escape from the harsh reality of urban displacement. Cast and Creative Team Gagarine review – close encounters of the banlieue kind
