Toward the end of Victor Kossakovsky’s latest film, an intertitle claims that, after water, concrete is the most used substance on Earth. Having explored the power of water in its many forms in 2019’s Aquarela, the Russian documentarian, not surprisingly, now turns his attention to solid materials—concrete and its ancestor, stone—that have shaped our world.

A haunting prologue reveals a ruined cityscape. Accompanied by Evgueni Galperine’s heart-stopping soundtrack of dissonant, blaring horns, striking drone footage by cinematographer Ben Bernhard sweeps over the shells of concrete apartment buildings, living rooms and bedrooms exposed to the elements. Piles of rubble block the empty streets. The location is unidentified, but it’s obvious this is a Ukrainian neighborhood destroyed by Russian missiles.

We next see a man examining an enormous stone megalith as the film’s main section opens with an intertitle quoting Italian poet Giovanni Pascoli: “There is something new within the sun today, or rather ancient.” The man is Italian architect Michele De Lucchi, standing among the Roman ruins of Baalbek in Lebanon. As with Kossakovsky’s other documentaries, there are no talking heads, no voice-over narration, but De Lucchi becomes the center point around which the director weaves his themes of creation and destruction.

“Architectons” is what avant-garde Russian artist Kazimir Malevich called his architectural sculptures, which had a great influence on many architects. As an homage, Dutch artist Nick Steur re-creates those sculptures in stone. The term also refers to the concept of a higher power, as Tolstoy used the word in War and Peace, and to the Greek word meaning “master builder.” We see that higher power, as represented by the forces of nature, in an astonishing slow-motion rockslide: small pebbles chased by ever-larger stones and boulders tumbling down. In the aftermath of that destructive natural force, dozens of bulldozers plow through and scoop up the concrete wreckage of a Turkish city badly damaged in the 2023 earthquake.

In filming the majestic Baalbek temples in a soft, silvery black and white, Kossakovsky (Aquarela) invites viewers to reflect on the unknown master builders who constructed these ancient edifices eons ago. He also follows a modern practitioner, De Lucchi, as he oversees the construction of a stone circle folly in the backyard of his country home near Milan.

It’s only in the epilogue that the circle’s purpose is revealed. Standing near the circle—which has become wildly overgrown while the rest of the lawn remains neatly mowed—De Lucchi confesses that he detests concrete (“nothing will grow”) and is ashamed that he is building a concrete skyscraper in Milan. He ponders why the Romans built structures that have survived for millennia, while today’s buildings last only 40 years. (Given that the Romans also worked with concrete, the omission of Rome’s Pantheon, with its concrete dome, is odd.)

Once again, Kossakovsky has created an austere spectacle of sight and sound that must be viewed on the biggest screen with the finest sound system available. Especially dazzling is the melding of Bernhard’s photography with Galperine’s technobeat score as glistening rocks of all shapes and colors, newly harvested from quarries, dance on a conveyor belt on their way to pulverization and eventual rebirth as concrete.

Architecton rocks!