The Little Brother

Bratan tells the story of seventeen-year-old Faruch and seven-year-old little Fatsy, two brothers living in a small Tajik town, brought up by their grandmother since their parents separated. They decide to go to their father living in a faraway city where he works as a doctor in a sanatorium. To do so, they take an astonishing train through Tajikistan across hills and mountains, cities and villages, up to the Afghan border. After a highly adventurous trip, they finally meet their father.

Bratan was Khudoynazarov’s debut film, shot when he was only twenty-five. It already bears the qualities of many great films: a sense of space, the art of revealing the characters, a continuity of the plot, a black and white perfect image. The film went on to be shown at many prestigious festivals and won many awards, among them the Grand Prix at Mannheim IFF in 1991.

It was the beginning of his successful career as a magician of world cinema.

Veit Helmer

Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov (1965-2015) – film director born in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan which at that time was a Soviet Republic. After working as an assistant director, he was accepted to the prestigious film school VGIK in Moscow, where he directed three short films before making his feature film debut, The Little Brother. In 1994 Khudojnazarov moved permanently to Berlin but continued to make films in Central Asia. His second film Odds and Evens won the Silver Lion in Venice in 1993 and his third, Luna Papa, was a box-office hit in cinemas around the world. Khudojnazarov created a stunning oeuvre of visually breathtaking films before his tragic death in 2015.