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The Stowaways (2023)

½ — The Stowaways (2023)

Rashad Babayev is a relatively obscure figure in Azerbaijani cinema, and The Stowaways sits firmly within that country's modest but growing tradition of low-budget independent filmmaking, largely invisible to international audiences outside of dedicated world cinema circles. Azerbaijan's film industry, small by regional standards, tends to operate with minimal infrastructure and limited distribution, which gives productions like this one a distinctly DIY quality. At 70 minutes, the film barely qualifies as a feature, and with no notable studio backing or documented budget, it appears to be a genuinely micro-budget effort, shot on location at what the story describes as a boarding house during a summer holiday, giving the whole thing an improvised, almost documentary texture.

A-Z World Movie Tour Azerbaijan I'm sorry but this might just be one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I get it. The director is trying to go for some avant garde artistic piece but it's just a selection of short clips taken with a handheld camera that just border on the absurd. A woman washing a chimpanzee type furry with water and then taking it to the beach? A middle aged woman rolling a watermelon up a hill? Random shots of what appears to be an Azerbaijani street... Random shots of sand with ambient low synth noises. Like in sorry but this is just the most pointless waffle.

Rating: ½ | Year: 2023 | Watched: 2025-05-25

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