Maryam Naghiyeva

Birthday of a lonely woman. Her husband died years ago and her sons left her alone. She expects only a simple telephone call but nobody calls. She makes special meals but nobody visits. She prays all day but they are not heard.

Immobile in a home where the sands of time fall to the rhythm of the rural Azerbaijani sounds, a mother waits for her son. When he arrives, their conversations circle around existential questions and news from afar. Unrest cloaks the world outside. Mother and son grow closer, silence melts into words, and life springs between them. The son leaves, and winter settles in to the forever-outdated house in which temporalities blurs and past and present beat to the rhythm of the same clock.

In rural Azerbaijan, a mother welcomes her adult son, who left home eight years earlier. In the calm rhythm of rural life, reflective silences punctuate their personal, philosophical conversations.

The love story of Davud, a young man in search of his ‘true’ family, who completes his life cycle in a single day. When he does find Love, it's in the place he has always lived. But perhaps it is too late.

As the world comes to an end, Shah Ismail embarks on a quest for the water of Life.