Hilal Baydarov Seeks Out the Alien Space That Feels Like Home, He Tells Ji.hlava Audience

Azeri filmmaker Hilal Baydarov’s work has won attention for its stunning imagery, confident framing and lyrical pacing, turning landscapes into hypnotic portraits of alien but familiar worlds. His masterclass at the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival – his first ever and one he had to be thoroughly talked into, he says – offered rare insights into his approaches and methods, built around a screening of his new film “Sermon to the Fish.” Originally titled “Balıqlara xütbə,” the Azerbaijan-Mexico-Switzerland-Turkey film opens on a young woman in a wild landscape whose head is completely wrapped, almost as if for burial, in a… Read Full Article