The Radiant Screen 2025 (trailer)
2025
The Radiant Screen invites us on a compelling journey through the Siberian landscape, focusing on the enigmatic closed city of >K (>Kene3HoropcK or Zheleznogorsk). Established in the 1950s this fenced-off town remains cast as the last socialist paradise on earth -a utopia sealed away from the rest of the world.
Film-maker L. is fascinated by the unreachable city nestled deep within the taiga. Through her lens, she gathers fragments: distant images, verbal accounts, staged performances and reconstructions. Actors breathe life into the dream with their vivid accounts.
The Radiant Screen is more than a poetic exploration-it’s a meditation on longing and the endless pursuit of ideals. It draws us into a world where secrecy and mystery intertwine, blurring the lines between imagination and reality. It dares us to confront utopian visions that reach beyond the confines of the post-capitalist ideal.
Film: 47 min. Trailer: 2:11 min.
Countries of production: Netherlands, Russia
Language: Russian, English
Director: lne Lamers
Producer: Rob de Vree
Screenplay: Saskia de Jong, Steve Rushton, lne Lamers
Production design: Rob de Vree, lne Lamers
Cinematography: Rob de Vree, Matija Pekic, lne Lamers
Editing: lne Lamers, Karl Riedl
Sound design: Roel Meelkop
Colour grading: Laurent Fluttert
Principal cast: Nadine Rotem-Stibbe, Kirill Botkov, Evgeniy Kolmov, Nataliya Senilshchikova, Nazar Dutko, Victoria Chaushyan, levgeniia Koval
Production company: AGMstudios
Sales/ World rights holder: lne Lamers
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Proyekt Ж
Proyekt Ж is a long-term project about the closed city of Железного́рск (Zheleznogorsk) in the heart of Siberia, Russia. Founded during the Cold War to outrun the atomic power of the American adversary and to secretly produce plutonium and missiles, Железного́рск was also a utopian model city. For those allowed to work there, the hidden city held the promise of realising the socialist ideal. In contemporary times the city is no longer a secret but it stays inaccessible as the largest (still-) closed city in the Russian Federation. Officially its population voted to stay in 'splendid isolation'. With my camera, I have been circling around this impenetrable place for years. The project took on Kafkaesque traits as I never gained access, like K in Kafka’s The Castle.
Ж became therefore a space onto which I project my desires and hopes. Is it conceivable that a place exists, or has existed, where socialism has succeeded? Could something of the relevance of the original socialist utopia persist or sustain? Are socialist ideals by definition unreachable?