A Film a Week - Banu

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Azerbaijan’s cinema history dates back to the late 19th century, but the national cinema has been dominated by male filmmakers ever since. Such lack of diversity tends to push the national cinema to the margins of the global festival circuit, making it obscure for the wider audiences. Maybe the young Los Angeles-based actress-turned-filmmaker Tahmina Rafaella could provide the solution to the problem with her directorial debut “Banu” which premiered at 2022 edition of Venice as a part of Biennale College Cinema programme.

It would be the easiest to describe it as a riff on the Dardenne brothers’ “Two Days, One Night” (2014), but on the topic of divorce and set against the backdrop of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War which took place in the autumn of 2020. The titular protagonist, played by the filmmaker herself, is a school teacher in a problem. Her rich and influential husband Javid (Zaur Shafiyev) took their son Ruslan (the newcomer Emin Asgarov) from her just days before the final court hearing about their divorce case. Preoccupied with the war and the imposed curfew, the police is unwilling to assist her, so her lawyer (Jafar Hasan) suggests that her only hope in the custody battle is to find the witness outside of her immediate family who would confirm that Javid was abusive towards her or Ruslan. However, the trouble is that virtually nobody, not even her own mother (Melek Abbaszadeh), is willing to confront Javid and his family directly.

As Rafaella said in the interviews, the problem of Azerbaijani women being able to legally divorce, but unable to obtain the custody of their children practically is a long-standing one in the country. It could be linked to the patriarchal culture that has survived the secularisation during the communist, Soviet times, as well as the economic liberalisation of the 90s and the oil boom in the 21st century that brought growth, but only to the chosen few.

We can see the details of that on the margins of the usually long hand-held takes behind the back and over the shoulder of the protagonist in Touraj Aslani's cinematography, in which Baku is portrayed as a modern capital city, but with a lot of architectural paradoxes that highlight the differences betweentradition and modernity, as well as between the haves and the have-nots. A high point is also the relatively quiet sound design by Ensieh Maleki in which the dialogues overlap with the news from the radio and the TV sets, along with the street sounds of the crowds that celebrate the military successes and chant in support of the families of the fallen soldiers.

From that, it is obvious that Tahmina Rafaella as a filmmaker has the talent and the method to create and capture the atmosphere, while also commanding the screen as an actress with considerable presence in every scene of the film. Her effort is complemented with those of the supporting cast members, with Melek Abbaszadeh and Zaur Shafiyev especially in the spotlight whose characters oppose the protagonist in the generational and social conflicts, respectively.

However, the most interesting aspect of “Banu” is its treatment of the war that is not the primary topic of the film, but serves as more than just a simple coulisse, since it is the primary concern of the whole society at the moment. In the end, Rafaella slightly overplays that card with some heavy-handed symbolism to prove a point that it might be men who are fighting in the trenches, but the women are those who are losing their loved ones, but “Banu” is still a very interesting and strong first-time filmmaking effort.

A Film a Week - Cold as Marble / Mermer soyugu

 previously published on Cineuropa

For a film bearing the title Cold as Marble, its opening is actually quite warm and funny. Jazz music plays from an old gramophone in a stylish, luxurious home, while two lovers share an after-sex cigarette in bed. A mobile phone ringing shatters this retro-styled idyll: it turns out that the place is not a home, but a house museum dedicated to the (possibly fictional) academic Agha Bayramov, and that the two of them have crashed the place for a secret meeting. Judging by the cars the two drive off in, she is the one who has something to hide: she is an employee of the museum and, as it turns out, the wife of a wealthy businessman, while he, with his long hair and unkempt beard, looks like a failed-artist type of slacker.

Premiering in the Tallinn Black Nights competition, Cold as Marble is the sophomore directorial effort by Azerbaijani filmmaker Asif Rustamov, following his 2014 debut, Down the River. Rustamov made a name for himself as a screenwriter on Ilgar Najaf’s films Red Garden (2016), Pomegranate Orchard (2017) and Sughra and Her Sons (2021). None of his previous efforts could be classified as comedies, but Cold as Marble at least starts out in that realm and later turns into something more serious.

The man of the couple, played by Elshan Asgarov, is actually a failed artist, potentially owing to his blindness in one eye, so he has to work as a gravestone engraver, specialising in portraits of the deceased. Another peculiar thing about him is his habit of avoiding the bedroom in his modest house, even when his married girlfriend (Natavan Abbasli) visits him. His routine changes one day when he finds an unexpected visitor who has broken into the house – his own father (Gurban Ismailov, the winner of the Best Actor Award at the festival), who is supposed to be serving a prison sentence.

The dad keeps berating the son, shouting homophobic slurs at him and trying to steer his life to bring it more into line with his own hustle schemes. However, unlike other people, the son knows his father’s dark secret and why he was imprisoned in the first place, and the girlfriend may have a scheme of her own that can be brought to fruition only with the help of a criminal. It seems that tragedy might repeat itself in yet another cycle...

Rustamov and his co-writer, Roelof Jan Minneboo, with whom he has collaborated on the majority of his work, set and then deftly manipulate the tone of their script. It starts out as comedic, toying with some absurdist, Coen brothers-like humour, passing through romance and family drama, and heading right into the territory of tragedy. Rustamov converts the story, both locally flavoured and universal at its roots, into a compact and smooth film, relying on the studied camerawork by Oktay Namazov and Adil Abbasov, and the editing by Rza Asgarov, but also paying special attention to directing the actors with a blend of guidance and trust for their instincts. All three leading thesps are marvellous in their roles, and the chemistry they share proves to be more than enough to channel the strange dynamics in the triangle formed by these nameless, wounded losers, making Cold as Marble red-hot.