Looking for home
2024 · 17m · Azerbaijan
Directed by Nurlan Hasanli
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
A Baku cinematographer and his wife, twice refused Canadian visas, turn to buying an apartment instead - and confront the punishing economics of homeownership in Azerbaijan's capital.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects a screed about visa rejections and displacement; instead Hasanli lets the apartment hunt itself become the wound, which is genuinely perverse in the best way—the system's cruelty hiding inside the most banal of aspirations.
A formally composed study in how documentary can track intimate economy without didacticism; the restraint in not overdramatizing the visa refusals shows real sophistication in the tradition of observational cinema.
The genius move is making the apartment itself the protagonist—every negotiation, every viewing becomes a conversation about what home actually costs, and that single reframing decision transforms what could've been straightforward testimony into something that actually breathes.