Like sleep-away camp when you're 10: you really don't want to go but once you're there, you have the time of your life. Gagarine (a project housing development in a Paris suburb named after Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut who was the first human in outer space) is slated to be demolished. Youri (the name is not a coincidence), a young man who lives in the building and dreams of space exploration, does what he can to save the building. What makes the movie ethereal is how it's filmed like a science fiction film. The building is a spaceship, its residents astronauts, the locals are (mostly) friendly aliens and the neighborhood is another planet. More a fable than a feel-good movie, Gagarine will transport you and make your see stars.

[Göteborg FF] Posed as a kind of magical realism, the adaptation of the short film "Gagarine" (2015) manages to broaden the vital horizon of the protagonist, although it does not reach a greater depth. The representation of poverty through the protagonist's dreams causes the visual aspect to opt in the last part for the fantasy embedded in a painful reality. In this sense, the directing work is remarkable, but it does not manage to solve the narrative dispersion.