Cinema
Latif
Lətif
Mikayil Mikayilov · 1930
Synopsis
At the time when collective farms are being formed in the Azerbaijani countryside, a tractor arrives in a remote mountain village. Its arrival divides the inhabitants: some see in it the sign of a new era, others dread it, and the affair turns into a class struggle around the chairman of the kolkhoz. Lətif, a young boy brought up by a stepmother, tries to keep the peace between the two camps, and it is his courage that forms the thread of the story.
Context
It was the first fiction film by its author, who also wrote the screenplay. The studio had conceived it for a boy noticed at the age of seven in La Fille du Gilan, and who would himself become a director; Aleksandr Goncharsky designed the sets. Silent, in six parts and forty-nine minutes, the film also bears the title Üz-üzə, “face to face”. In 2001, Salman Gambarov composed a score for it for piano and traditional instruments, with which it was screened in Switzerland at the Culturescapes festival.
Who it is for
Silent, forty-nine minutes, Russian intertitles; a film devoted to the building of the kolkhozes, seen from a child's height.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the first Azerbaijani film whose hero is a child, it has been among the films declared state property since 2019.
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