My Kith and Kin goes to meet Georgian audience

By AzerNews

The documentary "My Kith and Kin" by Azerbaijani film director Rodion Ismailov, a film about the journey of a child through her home country, is participating in the Cine-DOC Tbilisi film festival being held on October 15-20 in the Georgian capital.

Cine-DOC Tbilisi is the first international documentary festival in the South Caucasus that focuses on creative documentary, providing the audience with a chance to view a variety of documentary films with a unique directing vision, an original visual style, sympathetic protagonists and powerful stories.

The festival presents award-winning films from outside of Georgia as well as local and regional productions.

"My Kith and Kin" will participate in the "Focus Caucasus" section of the festival, along with another Azerbaijani documentary, "Oilman", which represents an unexpected vision on Azerbaijani oil, featuring an artist painting with oil. The film was directed by Seyran Mahmudoglu.

Recently, "My Kith and Kin" was declared the best film at the 4th International Tourist Film Festival Meeting with Russia in the city of Tula, and received the best full-length documentary film award at the 23rd international film festival "Message to Man" in Saint Petersburg.

The film was also included in the competition program of the international film festival "Filmfest Eberswalde" held in Germany on October 5-12.

The storyline of "My Kith and Kin" is based on the first visit by lead character Lolita to Azerbaijan. Lolita personifies two cultures, as her mother is Russian and her father is Azerbaijani.

This delicate and compelling story describes a ten-year-old girl who comes to Azerbaijan for the first time to be acquainted with her father's relatives. Lolita aspires to learn about the culture and traditions of her Azerbaijani family members.

The 63-minute long film of the DS FILM Production Center was made with the support of the Ministry of Culture of Russia in the Tovuz region of Azerbaijan. Camera operator of the film is Mikhail Gorobchuk, music was composed by Vladimir Kuptsov, and the producers are Rodion Ismailov and Svetlana Dalskaya.

The film won "The best anthropologic film" award at the eighth Open Russian Anthropological Film Festival (RAFF) in April and was nominated for "Best Documentary" at the eleventh Almaty International Film Festival "Shaken's Stars".

The film was also shown at the international documentary film festival "Visions du Réel" ("The images of reality") in Nyon, Switzerland, in April.