Hostage

A quiet, heavy village drama where ordinary people are trapped by forces beyond them, watching neighbors become enemies with a slow ache of dread.

Directed by

Eldar Guliyev

Genres

Drama

Starring

Gurban Ismailov, Gular Nabiyeva, Mirsahib

Overview

During the late 1980s and early 1990s the Armenian minority in Nagorono-Karabakh attempted to break away from Azerbaijan, one of the former Soviet republics. Overnight these former neighbors became enemies, and simple village folk were suddenly made hostages in a complex power game. One of the Azerbaijani villages right on the border is home to the family of the peasant farmer Kerim, who has just been captured by the Armenians. The village council decides to take an Armenian in order to arrange a hostage exchange. They imprison the wounded man in the barn next to Kerim's house, where his wife and three children desperately await the husband's return. The captive from the other side of the border finds himself in exactly the same situation - he, too, has three children, he finds it hard to scrape a living together, he has never done anything to harm anyone and, like Kerim, he just wants to go back home. But life in Karabakh is far more complex now. Blood calls for blood.

How it feels

Bleak, tense, melancholic and earnest. Slow-burning and needs your attention.

About

War, family, survival, isolation

Content

Mild violence and language. No gore or sexual content.

Note

Written by AI, so it can be wrong. Full breakdown

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