Sky Cinema, an extraordinary cinematic venue, will make its debut on St. Petersburg’s map as part of the 35th Message to Man International Film Festival. The project is carried out in partnership with the architectural bureau KATARSIS, the educational initiative Masters, with support from RBI Group and the CYCLE film collective.
From 18 October, the Creative Boiler Room at the Levashovsky Bread Factory Cultural Centre will be transformed into Sky Cinema, hosting an extensive screenings programme. Festival guests will have the chance to fulfil a childhood dream: watching films on a vast screen projected overhead in this bespoke cinematic space.
The Festival is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives, and the St. Petersburg Committee for Culture.
Frames from above: the Sky Cinema debuts at the Message to Man International Film Festival in St. Petersburg. The project brings together an original architectural concept by KATARSIS ab, the Creative Boiler Room at the Levashovsky Bread Factory, support from the Masters educational project and RBI Group, as well as a rich selection of retrospective and premiere screenings curated by filmmaker Alexander Zubkovsky. The project will open to audiences on 18 October. Sky Cinema will operate daily until 25 October (with approximately three screenings per day), with a possible extension until 30 October. The full schedule will be available on the Festival’s website.
Beneath a fabric dome, audiences will see short and full-length films by Russian and international filmmakers. This cinema—an art installation and a work of contemporary art in its own right—accommodates twenty-five viewers per screening. Instead of traditional seats, comfortable reclining areas offer a unique viewing experience of lying back and gazing upward.
“The idea of Sky Cinema is deeply personal for us. It was our first successful competitive project, the starting point of our creative journey. We are thrilled to see it finally come to life—and could hardly imagine a better place or occasion for this. Message to Man is a legendary independent film festival, and the Levashovsky Bread Factory is a wonderful, welcoming cultural venue. The cylindrical volume of the former boiler room, reminiscent of the Roman Pantheon, is the perfect vessel for our cinema. In a way, it feels like destiny.
We have always seen parallels between filmmaking and architecture. The key difference is that cinema is intangible. Its very ephemerality makes it pure magic, akin to a dream. Architecture is rooted in the earth, yet it too sometimes longs to escape gravity, to transcend walls and ceilings and become air. Our cinema is a kind of canopy enveloping the viewer. Images unfold high above, under the dome, and the act of watching becomes a collective dream,” — KATARSIS architectural bureau.
“In the 35th anniversary year of a major international film festival like Message to Man, it is significant that the Levashovsky Bread Factory hosts a programme at the intersection of diverse arts—architecture, cinema, and contemporary conceptual art. Such collaboration offers audiences a truly novel and distinctive aesthetic experience, which has always captivated us as a development company,” — Pavel Filippov, Vice-President for Corporate Development, RBI Group.
Guests can look forward to retrospectives of experimental filmmaker Scott Barley, a poet of the boundaries between existence and non-existence; documentarian Ben Rivers, enamoured with parallel worlds; and Japanese avant-garde artist Takashi Makino.
The creators of short films in the Landscapes of Memory programme invite viewers to see the world through the attentive lens of an old camera and the artist behind it. Works by Mal de Mer Films studio offer experimental observations of micro- and macrocosms. The Vibrant Matter section explores the interplay between the natural and the man-made, while attendees of the New Trajectories: Feature Film Premieres will be among the first in Russia to experience expansive cinematic works from Switzerland, France, Portugal, the United States, Argentina, Hungary, Spain, Mexico, and Singapore.
“Sky Cinema is a unique experience: a construction of floating fabric and a horizontally suspended screen beneath the roof of a large tent; a performative installation merging architecture with cinematic experiment. Audiences will encounter vast cosmic landscapes from Takashi Makino’s films, the oneiric and shadowed worlds of Scott Barley, the otherworldly shores and vanished cities of Ben Rivers.
The programme itself is arranged in circles. The first: retrospectives of three leading figures of experimental cinema (Rivers, Barley, and Makino). The second: new features and mid-length films selected specifically for this “skyward” viewing experience. Among them: an essay film exploring the language of animals and birds (Intersections); a portrait of American neurobiologist working on consciousness expansion (John Lilly); a monumental three-hour meditation on drifting through Paris neighborhoods (Obscure Night – “Ain’t I a Child?”); and Monad, a film re-edited by its author for every screening. Each of these works explores visual and sonic media and seeks to reshape our notion of what cinema can be.
The next circle consists of two short-film sections: Vibrant Matter, dedicated entirely to contemporary analogue avant-garde; and Landscapes of Memory, films that weave together those two concepts. Finally, a separate section of Sky Cinema will host the premieres of three new works by the independent Moscow studio Mal de Mer Films,” — Alexander Zubkovsky, film programme curator.
Films in the New Trajectories: Feature Film Premieres section:
- John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office, 2025, Michael Almereyda, Courtney Stephens (USA);
- Monad, 2024, Dana Dawud (Singapore);
- Obscure Night – “Ain’t I a Child?”, 2025, Sylvain George (Switzerland‚ France‚ Portugal);
- Sanctuary Station, 2024, Brigid McCaffrey (USA);
- Intersections, 2025, Julián Galay (Argentina);
- Small Hours of the Night, 2025, Daniel Hui (Singapore);
- Later in the Clearing, 2025, Márton Tarkövi (Hungary‚ Spain);
- Next Life, 2025, Tenzin Phuntsog (USA‚ Mexico).
Selected films by Scott Barley:
- A Ladder, 2025, Scott Barley;
- Sleep Has Her House, 2023, Scott Barley;
- Half Moon, 2020, Scott Barley.
Selected films by Takashi Makino:
- Anti-Cosmos, 2022, Takashi Makino;
- Microcosmos, 2022, Takashi Makino;
- On Generation and Corruption, 2017, Takashi Makino;
- Constellation, 2024, Takashi Makino.
- Now, At Last!, 2019, Ben Rivers;
- Ijen/London, 2022, Ben Rivers;
- A Distant Episode, 2015, Ben Rivers.
Films in the Landscapes of Memory section:
- Small Private Property, 2024, Natasha Lyutik (Russia);
- Tape 200: In the Distance of the Persian Gulf, 2025, Anastasia Nikolaenko (Russia);
- Oblivion, 2024, Alexey Gritsevich (Belarus);
- The Marriage of Hell and Heaven, 2025, Dmitry Lukyanov (Russia‚ France);
- Language Decay, 2025, Zazie Ray-Trapido (USA);
- White Earth, Black Air, 2025, Nastasya Lapsha (Russia);
- Cloud Reel, 2024, Mark Petrovitsky (Russia).
Works by Mal de Mer Films studio:
- Sal’s Way, 2025, Gleb Piryatinskiy (USA);
- In a Grove, 2025, Anton Lukin (Russia);
- Polynices’ Exile, 2025, Oleg Golovaty (Russia).
Films in the Vibrant Matter section:
- Unstable Rocks, 2024, Ewelina Rosinska (Germany‚ Portugal);
- Commute, 2024, Henry Hills (USA);
- A Slippage in Five Movements, 2024, Valentina Rosset (Brazil);
- Vibrant Matter, 2024, Pablo Marín (Brazil);
- Suspicions About the Hidden Realities of Air, 2025, Sam Drake (USA);
- Sinking Feeling, 2024, Zachary Epcar (USA);
- II, 2022, Alexandre Larose (Canada).