KUKLALAR

Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, 1989. To earn a little money a group of youths squeeze themselves into costumes of Western comic heroes and charge passers-by on the Caspian Sea promenade for photographs taken with them. At the same time they run after girls, enjoying the springtime joys and pangs of adolescence. A careless existence soon to be overrun by the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh escalates, trainloads of refugees begin to arrive and in Baku the hour of the nationalist movement appears to have come. The Armenian photographer for whom the six youths work is forced into exile, putting an abrupt end to this collective coming-of-age. Mickey Mouse, Baloo the Bear, Pinnochio and Co. are forced to choose between life and death, hide-and-seek or to fight for the independence of a hitherto unknown fatherland. An effortlessly produced period film that obviously proved cause for irritation with local censors: whilst the end of the official version shows portrait photos of fallen youths, glorifying martyrdom, an alternative version to be found on the internet ends with the tattered uniforms of those killed on the battlefield; mourned by the only survivor of the original group of six.