Arquivo

A young doctor undertakes a journey connected to his work, to an unusual city in Central Asia devoid of population. Mysterious forces interfere with his research: unbearable heat, bizarre personalities, frightening foresight, a conversation with a friend already dead, intervention from aliens. The film is structured based on contradiction: a sound track that does not match the scenes (such as in the association of a muslim woman at prayer with music from a cartoon), colors and textures that change drastically and in an aleatory fashion. In yet another poetic narrative by Sokurov, time is suspended and distorted, disintegrating the relationship between the planes in cinema, between the protagonist and the scenario of the film, between contemporary man and the world.