Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine's 'Mundo Frágil' Premieres at MoMA, Tracing Smiljan Radić Across Chile

Smiljan Radić, winner of the 2026 Pritzker Prize, is the subject of 'Mundo Frágil', a documentary by Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine that had its world premiere on 12 October at the Museum of Modern Art in New York during the 18th Architecture & Design Film Festival. The film follows Radić on a car journey through Chilean landscapes, using the vehicle as a space for conversation. The first stop is a house in Santiago designed by Miguel Eyquem, a work Radić has visited repeatedly; there he is drawn less to the building than to bird cages built and repaired with a simplicity he admires, finding in them an honesty hard to reproduce through architectural design. In Vilches, south of Santiago, the scale shifts: Radić has built an experimental refuge for himself, his wife, the sculptor Marcela Correa, and their children. The final destination is the Atacama Desert, where Radić's grandfather emigrated in 1919 from the Croatian island of Brač; the ruins of the settlement where he lived and the roadside memorials turn the territory into an archive of lives, displacements and losses. Early in the film, Radić receives the Pritzker at a ceremony at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City, though the Chile trip, filmed months earlier, leaves behind the solemnity of the international honor. The directors dwell on his contradictions rather than building a monumental portrait, and in conversation his influences, doubts and an unexpected defense of laziness surface. A trailer has been released.