A peculiar yet striking architectural form—“The Sun” heliocomplex—features in the opening shots of Uzbek artist and filmmaker Saodat Ismailova’s 18,000 Worlds (2023). Perhaps like no other building in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, it crystallizes the political, cultural, and economic will which animated the Central Asian city for nearly half a century; a hallmark of the Soviet Union’s postwar ambition for a modern socialist alternative to the capitalist West.