Hermitage Collection of Paintings

Won Main Prize on Oberhausen International Short Film Festival.
Alexander Sokurov (Russian Ark) meditates on the work of French romantic artist Hubert Robert, whose paintings of lost ruins evoke the same nostalgia and lyricism of Sokurov's own moody films.
This is the first film of, and as of yet the only film in, a series planned by Hermitage Bridge Studios dedicated to the most important masters of European painting, whose works are included in the collection of the Hermitage Museum, the most famous of Russian museums. It in envisaged that the films will be made by the most prestigious of St. Petersburg's film directors. Only Sokurov has already made his film.
From the enormous list of celebrated names, Sokurov has chosen one — and a very modest one indeed: Hubert Robert, a French painter who worked between the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. He painted ruins in landscapes.