C'était un géant aux yeux bruns
Eileen Hofer
Switzerland, Azerbaijan | 2012 | 85 min
Languages : Azerbaijani, Russian
Subtitle : English
Five years after her mother’s divorce, Sabina, a young woman living in Basel, travels to Azerbaijan, the country where she is from, to meet her father and older sister, who stayed with him in Baku. Her secret wish is to settle there. But her father is remarrying, while her sister is distressed by her fiancé’s call-up for the army. Torn between two cultures, Sabina struggles to understand the land of her ancestors.
Sabina, a young woman living in Basel with her mother, travels to Azerbaijan, the country where she is from, for the summer holidays. After five years’ separation following her parents’ divorce, she is going to meet her father again and her older sister, who stayed with him in Baku. Her secret wish is to settle there. But her father is remarrying, while her sister is distressed by her fiancé’s call-up for the army. Torn between two cultures, Sabina goes deeper into the Caucasus, struggling to understand the land of her ancestors. Taking a direct approach, Eileen Hofer has made a “new wave” documentary in which the film is made by the filming and the truth lies not so much in the story as in living, throbbing bodies in quest of love. “As if to record Sabina ‘live’, the film was shot both day and night. The story was written and rewritten as we went along, in consultation with the protagonists. No face-to-face interviews: this is a filmed encounter, a subtle film d’auteur which deals with reality by ‘staging’ it to some extent from time to time” (EH).
Luciano Barisone
Translation BMP Translations
