banu

Banu

Directed by Tahmina Rafaella
Azerbaijan | 2022 | Narrative
90 minutes

In this deeply humanist drama a woman is accused of being an unfit mother by her influential husband. Banu fights for the custody of her son amid the chaos of the final days of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, which was a major escalation in 2020 of an unresolved conflict involving Azerbaijan, Armenia and the self-declared Armenian breakaway state of Artsakh. She has four days to find a single voice to speak on her behalf. This incredibly moving debut feature film by Azerbaijanian director and riveting lead actor Tahmina Rafaella won a spot in the Venice Film Festival’s Biennale College Cinema program and was given €150,000 to finance the film production and an opportunity to premiere it at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, where it also won the 2022 Hollywood Foreign Press Association Special Prize.