Evge

Burials are moments of closure, yet some open old wounds. In the opening scene of Nariman Aliev’s narratively compact debut feature HOMEWARD, Alim, a Crimean-Tatar university student in Kiev, sits in the hallway of the coroner’s office, while his father Mustafa negotiates the release of the body of Alim’s brother Nazim. Nazim was killed in the Ukraine-Russia war. In this tense scene, Mustafa bribes the official to get his son’s body back. The two then transport Nazim in the back of their car, their journey like an obstacle course which illustrates how Crimean Tatars are treated with suspicion and sometimes contempt. The conflict revolves around two opposing forces: the power of forgetting and the power of tradition, of memory. Muslim Tatar heritage and the injustices suffered by the Crimeans, whose region has been annexed by Russia, serve as the backdrop. With stark landscapes and emotional relentlessness, Aliev depicts homeland as destiny, as a tie thicker than blood. For Alim, home is inextricably tied to the figure of his forbidding, misogynist father. Beneath the violence, passed from father to son, genuine affection struggles to emerge.
(Ela Bittencourt)

In the presence of Nariman Aliev.