The Radiant Screen / 2025 / 47’

Ine Lamers

my role: assistant editor

The Russian model city Ж has been completely shielded from change and reality. A poetic film-essay, The Radiant Screen explores this Soviet utopia which is cloaked behind a smokescreen of plutonium waste. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, it has consciously – and unconsciously – remained closed.

The Radiant Screen explores the city Ж, also known as Zheleznogorsk, located in the heart of Siberia. This still-closed model city was built in the 1950s to conceal a secret plutonium programme. It is home to 100,000 Russians, who live their lives secluded from the rest of the world.

This hybrid documentary takes viewers through the Siberian landscape as former residents talk about their lives and memories of the city. Filmmaker Ine Lamers is not so interested in what the city is actually like, but rather in the meaning of this socialist utopia and the snow globe around it. It works both ways: what is inside, stays inside, and what is outside, stays outside too.

(text by Christiaan Boesenach)

My role as an assistant editor overlapped partly with my internship period. I was intrigued by both the project and by Ine Lamers. The project, which had been in development for ten years, was the concluding part of a series about Ж. Bringing together photography, documentary, and fiction. In the first phase, I worked with editor Karl Riedl and Ine Lamers; in the following period, I continued working with Ine Lamers on the further editing of the film.