The Architect

Secrets, lies and concrete are at the heart of this film, an intensely personal documentary. Essentially the story of a man searching for the truth about his dead father, this film also explores some of the most celebrated architectural works of the 20th century.

Louis I. Kahn, in many ways the archetypal immigrant success story, came to the USA from Estonia with his Jewish family at the beginning of last century.

He went on to become one of the world’s most celebrated architects, left behind three children, two of them illegitimate, and died a bankrupt in the men’s room in New York’s Penn Station.

The film’s director, Nathaniel Kahn, is the youngest bastard child now seeking to unravel his father’s life of contradictions. The two most fascinating sequences contrast Kahn’s unfinished synagogue project in Jerusalem and the extraordinary Capital Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The film’s obsessiveness, sometimes a tad irritating, somehow suits a quest for truths that remain elusive.