Portraits by WILLIAM SELDEN
I
n the Old Town in Azerbaijan’s capital, it does feel as if you have stepped back in time. As long as you don’t look up. Outside of these few blocks you can see a sharp tower piercing the sky. One of the visual effects team on this film is taking photographs, for reference, so they can work to digitally remove it. Ali and Nino is an early 20th-century novel of longing and loss and rapturous romance. But while Baku retains much of its long-standing charm, the city is more modern than new visitors might expect. The filmmakers have to obscure freshly minted buildings and transport us back in time – though the story’s themes of love transcending race or religion, politics crushing people and, well, vengeance, remain timely. Published in 1937, under the pseudonym Kurban Said (the identity of its true author is disputed), Ali and Nino follows the titular couple as they are united by love and divided by culture and conflict. Ali Khan (Adam Bakri) is an Azerbaijani Muslim determined to marry his childhood sweetheart, the Georgian Christian Nino Kipiani (María Valverde). But as well as tradition, they have politics against them – the First World War and the battle for control of the oil-rich country. There is personal passion but also national duty to consider – the fight for Azerbaijan’s independence. “It’s kind of a cultural treasure,” says producer Kris Thykier, of the novel. “There aren’t many books that you come across where you think, ‘Oh, not only does it have a place in the world literary canon but it also has a particular place in a nation’s heart.’ It’s a very beautiful, evocative book.” Thykier hired Dangerous Liaisons scribe Christopher Hampton to write the screenplay – a tricky process, of 12 drafts, during which the producer searched for the right director to bring the words to life. “I needed to find somebody who was a ‘heart’ director,” says Thykier. “There are a lot of cerebral directors out there but there has been a move away from raw emotion and I needed someone who was rawly emotional.” The search led 92 Baku.
