The film opens with black and white archival footage in which Yuri Gagarin inaugurates the Cité Gagarin in Ivry-sur-Seine, on the outskirts of Paris, in front of a cheering crowd. In joy and euphoria, a hope is expressed which then merges into the color of the present and its reality. We encounter a built-up area with decaying apartments and its inhabitants, following young Youri, 16, who dreams of a spaceship, of distant lands and of becoming a cosmonaut one day. He has never left Gagarin City and lives alone in one of the many apartments of the housing complex, with his drawings, space maps and an old telescope. But the red-brick city is threatened with demolition and he will do anything possible to prevent this from happening. |
