SKIN OF GLASS

A FILM BY DENISE ZMEKHOL

International Architecture Film Festival Barcelona
Mill Valley Film Festival
Milano Design Film Festival
Venice Architecture Film Festival
Salem Film Festival
Architecture & Design Film Festival
Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam
Arketikturfilm Oslo
LeFifa laurel
Hawaii International Film Festival
Film and Architecture Czech Festival

A poetic and personal cinematic meditation on displacement, inequality and loss, SKIN OF GLASS follows my journey upon discovering that my late father's most celebrated work as an architect, a modernist glass skyscraper in the heart of São Paulo, has become occupied by hundreds of homeless families.

Watch the Skin of Glass trailer and view the festival screenings

This personal search forces me to face the brutal reality of a global crisis: one in six people in the world are squatters. These are the cities of the future, the cities of tomorrow. I am accompanied on my journey by people with a passionate connection to my father’s work and the fate of the building. I film several of them over the course of a year, including city officials who see the building as a threat to public safety, occupation leaders fighting to protect the rights of squatters, residents of the building, and scholars of architecture arguing for preservation. Through their stories, we come to understand the symbolic importance of the building as a reflection of Brazil’s political and economic turmoil over the last half century.

Skin of Glass
Skin of Glass interior

 

graffiti on Skin of Glass window
Roger Zmekhol at work
Skin of Glass stairway in office
man and woman stand together
Skin of Glass windows
Skin of Glass interior, empty chair
Skin of Glass interior, man sits on desk
smoking rubble of a building