Azeri filmmaker Orkhan Aghazadeh’s The Return of the Projectionist is a parable of cinema being handed from one technology to the opposite and vice versa, in altering form and kind, grounded in an unshakable, absolute, and uncompromising love for the medium. When the once-upon-a-time projectionist getting old Samid digs out the projector, it’s all musty and dust-crusted. Whereas the movie by no means tells us when and the way the cinema viewing expertise folded up within the distant Azeri village, we gauge that the interval might have been lengthy however has solely enhanced the thirst of the neighborhood for its return.

So, there is no such thing as a quick opposition when Samid proposes to revive the tradition. The villagers longingly recount reminiscences of the occasions once they would huddle in a tent within the thick of winter to look at a movie. There’s a completely beautiful second once they burst out singing a track from an previous Hindi movie that was a raging hit within the village, Disco Dancer.

In a poignant confession, Samid shares how he misses the sound the projector made when it was useful. The lullaby-like sound comforted him. Even when there’s a wave of enthusiasm that he sparks in his neighborhood, it’s as much as him to show his proposal into actuality. Because the projector’s lamp has gone kaput, he has to pay money for a brand new one. For an web connection to register, he has to hike a distance that’d allow an e-order of the bulb being shipped all the best way from Lithuania. Samid finds an ally in one of many native youngsters, Ayaz.

Ayaz is making his personal brief animated movie concerning the Russian aggression on Ukraine. He has simply acquired his smartphone to try this. Along with Samid, he creates scenes to be transposed into animation. When the 2 embark on recording sounds, the pleasant, irritating, and exulting journey and experimentation embedded in movie-making discover utterance.

At its coronary heart, The Return of the Projectionist is a perceptive, partaking, and generously attentive dialogue between two generations, meditating on the 2 and drawing one of the best from each other. There are intermittent conflicts and a few chafing, however in the end, Samid and Ayaz are kindred souls whose deep ardour for movie is powerful sufficient to bat away any technological hindrance that will and does prop up. The core dedication binding them equalizes them and powers them to march forward in particular person and shared pursuits.

Samid is cooped up in grief over the sudden passing of his son, Polad. It has been two years. Aghazadeh doesn’t reveal a lot about Samid’s household besides that he has chosen to disconnect himself and lead a solitary life within the village. He pays no heed to the bitter gossip going round within the village, casting aspersions on him for not being together with his household. In Ayaz, Samid retrieves remnants of his late son, eagerly bonding with him. A few of his aching, repressed loneliness lifts when he’s with Ayaz. There may be the chance for sentimentality, however Aghazadeh mercifully by no means indulges in it.

Their scenes collectively, as they assist out one another, brim with heat, camaraderie, and an inherent mutual respect. Ayaz might get fleetingly vexed and upset with Samid, however he returns to him, deeply conscious of the information and worth Samid possesses in his previous tools. Their entry to assets is minimal, however they don’t get slowed down by it.

Samid particularly doesn’t permit himself to get defeated by any sudden inconvenience. He might have slipped out of his routine for some time, however he has completed this lengthy sufficient to search out methods of working himself out of disruptions that might crush a novice like Ayaz. He, too, clearly began out as a younger boy at some point, albeit the technological progress between his and Ayaz’s youth is undeniably immense. To Samid, the boy may simply as nicely be his personal mirror of the longer term.

Aghazadeh depicts the village as one tightly cloistered from the exterior world. The topical battle between Azerbaijan and Armenia receives solely a cursory point out. It’d be unfair to accuse the movie of an omission on such a component because the director establishes the precepts of his movie proper from the start. The filmmaking is polished, maybe a tad an excessive amount of for a documentary, and lots of scenes, regardless of being eminently watchable, teeter near being artfully curated and mounted.

When the movie settles for a number of quiet moments of Samid reposing by himself within the woods, the design feels jarringly apparent. However there are pockets of sharp commentary into the neighborhood. When Samid suggests to a bunch of village elders that there are scenes within the movie chosen for screening that could possibly be explicitly provocative, initially, they brush previous his worries. After the mentioned scene is proven nonetheless, there’s a flurry of on the spot protest and rejection.

That the movie ought to have a excessive ethical code is the largest precedence dictated by the council. Ladies are noticeably excluded from such decision-making. They will solely attend the screening solely with the permission of their husbands or males of their family. The social cloth is insightfully knit into the movie’s portrait of a neighborhood.  With such revealing shades and a chic, exquisitely playful coda, The Return of the Projectionist rises above the stray artifice, rising as subtly eloquent and urgently pragmatic.

The Return of the Projectionist premiered at Visions du Réel Movie Pageant 2024.

The Return of the Projectionist (2024) Film Hyperlinks: IMDb, MUBI