The best city is not a city

A young man, sitting on a rusty hangar, playing his guitar. An abandoned wooden church, no longer needed, relocating to the outskirts of an urban expansion area for cultural interim usage. Nursery school children in a chair circle telling each other what they are NOT doing. In his essay film Die beste Stadt ist keine Stadt (The best city is no city at all), Christoph Schwarz mixes multiple perspectives on Vienna's largest urban expansion area. They share a sentimental criticism of growth and a romantic refusal to progress while facing imminent ecological collapse, which seems more credible to us than any happy ending. (Daniel Bleninger)