Shamil Aliyev (The Steppe Man)

"A man cannot forget his past lives; it’s against everything that’s sacrosanct. This film is in a kind of neutral zone and isn’t in favour of globalization or against it. My position is that life today is hard and it represents the intimate war of a man who feels his past and where he is coming from. In this film, things are observed through the optics of love. I presented love through a timeless, traditional folk tale. I hope that the film will make people from a different cultural and historical part of the world question their past. I would say it is one of the main reasons for making the film. We very much value tradition and national history and I touched these subjects in my previous films. This is, however, a universal story about man’s struggle and constant questioning where he belongs."