Abode of Dawn
2025 CPH:DOX
2025 Visions du Réel
Where do you go when the world feels overwhelming and just plain wrong? Can you escape and start anew? This documentary follows its protagonists for nearly a decade, as they try to build a utopian society in the Siberian Taiga. Some of them are followers of a religious community whose leader sees himself as the Son of God and calls himself Vissarion. Since the 1990s, his followers have been building a settlement, high up on a remote mountain, for the society of the future: The Abode of Dawn. The film focuses on the villages surrounding the Abode of Dawn. Fragments and scenes from the lives of the residents shape themselves into a mosaic. Take a step back and you recognize the iridescent image of this place in all its complexity. The film does not ask: Is Vissarion truly the Son of God? Instead, it poses the question: Are the people here happier than they were where they came from?