Rodion Ismailov
Azerbaijan, Russia | 2013 | 66 min
World premiere
Languages : Azerbaijani, Russian
Subtitles : English, French
10-year-old Lolita, the daughter of a Russian mother and an Azerbaijani father, meets her father’s family for the first time. Arriving in a small village in the Caucasus without knowing a word of the local language, she is faced with a lifestyle unfamiliar to her and discovers her own roots. The result is culture shock, actions bringing people together, and tender, touching intimacy.
10-year-old Lolita, the daughter of a Russian mother and an Azerbaijani father, meets her father’s family for the first time. She arrives in a small village lost in the Caucasus mountains where, not speaking the local language, she understands nothing of family matters or the lifestyle of this community. Used to the pace and atmosphere of the city, she remains indifferent to countryside activities. Even the village fêtes – where she realises the lambs are to be ritually sacrificed – seem inhospitable places to her. Then the situation suddenly changes. Working almost invisibly, always maintaining an appropriate distance, the filmmaker captures the protagonist’s moments of hesitation, her curiosity, her disgust. Magnificent shots engrave the bodies onto the harsh nature that surrounds them, the familiar bodies of the local people and that of the young girl, the outsider. They reveal their converged views, the actions of possible reciprocity. In a state of grace, Lolita discovers her roots and the camera its own power of attraction. Cinema was right to be there.
Luciano Barisone
