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Hilal Baydarov

Hilal Baydarov

Directing

Biography

Hilal Baydarov (Azerbaijani: Hiləl Baydarov; Russian: Хилал Байдаров; born 1987; Baku) is an Azerbaijan filmmaker, cinematographer and editor. During his high school years, he won the national championships of mathematics twice in 2004 and 2005. In 2011 he lead the Azerbaijani team at the informatics olympiad. After a master in computer sciences, Baydarov studied at the Sarajevo Film Academy under acclaimed Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr before going on to make his feature debut HILLS WITHOUT NAMES (2018), which premiered at the Montreal World Film Festival, the same year his documentary debut BIRTHDAY won the Docu Talent Award at the Sarajevo Film Festival. Since then Hilal has completed an award-winning trilogy of documentaries set in Katech Azerbaijan: WHEN THE PERSIMMONS GREW (2019) which won the Heart of Sarajevo for Best Documentary at the Sarajevo and the Interreligious Award and Special Jury Mention at Visions du réel; MOTHER AND SON (2019), which premiered in the main competition at IDFA; and NAILS IN MY BRAIN (2020) which premiered at Cinema du réel. His second feature film IN BETWEEN DYING (2020) became a participant in the man competition of the 77th Venice Film Festival.

Known For

In Between Dying
6.2

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.

In Between Dying

2021
Crane Lantern
5.5

Musa, a law student seeks out Davud, a man imprisoned for kidnapping four women. He soon discovers that all of his victims have no wish to press charges. On the contrary, they have the feeling of a new truth in themselves. Musa's encounter with the purported criminal becomes a journey into someone else's inner world. Are the questions he asks the correct ones? Is the law a genuine form of justice? What is the meaning of humans imposing punishment on others? Is Musa being enlightened by a superior man, or is he being lured into a world of illusion?

Crane Lantern

2022
Sermon to the Fish
7.3

Davud returns from war to find everyone in his village has succumbed to a strange illness and has decomposed. His sister, the only survivor, is slowly rotting away herself. Davud is troubled by his memories as a soldier, as he confronts the only true question: is surviving the same as living?

Sermon to the Fish

2022
When the Persimmons Grew
5.0

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.

When the Persimmons Grew

2019
Hills Without Names
7.0

After many years the Wanderer returns to his land to hear the Voice again which can be heard only there.

Hills Without Names

2018
Mother and Son
5.0

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.

Mother and Son

2019
Sermon to the Void
N/A

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

Sermon to the Void

2025
One Day in Selimpasha
N/A

One man and an apartment, about which we know nothing. This is the premise of a conceptual documentary based on the concept of providing a deliberately limited amount of information to the viewer. We look into the intimate space behind the closed front door, where the most ordinary activities are carried out: cooking lunch, preparing tea, eating lunch, starting a fire in the fireplace. In this residential monodrama, a second living actor is desperately lacking, one that would bring to life the plot embodied in speech. It becomes a study of a person’s existence in their most personal space - a dwelling that can be just as much a preserve of peace and security as a golden cage of solitude.

One Day in Selimpasha

2018
Sermon to the Birds
6.0

Davud and Sura are under siege. They wait for the Hunter. Hunter is omnipresent.

Sermon to the Birds

2023
Nails in My Brain
7.0

A young man wanders through the ruins of what may or may not be his childhood home, where each crumbling doorway opens up onto the past. Memories accost him-memories of his school days, of loved ones long gone, of wonder, callousness, and defeat. The painful invasion gives rise to a series reflections on the limits of cinema and the poverty, and inescapability, of the life of the mind. No matter how much he has tried to change, the young man-who may or may not be the filmmaker himself-always returns to the same places, same questions, same faces, same recollections-the same nails in his brain.

Nails in My Brain

2020
Birthday
6.0

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.

Birthday

2018
No image
N/A

Living and working in the decaying confines of a construction site, a young couple struggles to secure a hopeful future for their unborn child, trapped in a cycle of poverty and exploitation as they search for redemption amidst the rubble.

Stone Over Stone