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Ru Hasanov

@auteurcat

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🎥 Film Director
❤️ Heart of Sarajevo | Best Director
🐆 Golden Leopard Nominee
📽️ EFA member
🇦🇿 Oscar Entry | Best International Feature Film

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Today, on National Cinema Day, I want to share the official poster for my new feature film, Majnun, which will be released next year.

I will probably be sharing the first trailer later this year, so stay tuned.

Azerbaijani cinema has come a long way. It has known moments of triumph and moments of hardship. It has produced remarkable artists and endured difficult times. Yet even in its darkest chapters, there were filmmakers who refused to let the flame go out. They kept creating, believing, and passing that fire on to the next generation.

We are only temporary custodians of that flame. Our responsibility is not simply to preserve it, but to leave it burning brighter than we found it.

Happy National Cinema Day to everyone who continues to tell stories, take risks, and keep Azerbaijani cinema alive.

Producers: @ilkin_mahammadli @emlncf @atamannalexander
Director of Photography: @sabirkrm
Production Designer: @guram_navroz
Editor: @asifisgandarli
Composer: @teymurnadirkerimov
Sound Designer: @r.medoff
Colorist: @koshernov
Poster Designer: @sailorsatyrn
Lead Cast: @nihadjafarov @leyliavara @vahid_orucoglu
Production Company: @filming.azerbaijan @rentalazerbaijan @8__media by @auteurcat

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2 months ago

post tenebras lux by @auteurcat

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2 years ago

#NoSuchThing

My first (sort of) commercial film shot almost 10 years ago. Commissioned as a New Year feel-good story, it became something that continues to live with audiences.

Two friends, Kamran and Məcnun, cross paths with a grandmother and granddaughter, Tamilla and Sara. A rare snow blizzard in Baku separates them on New Year’s Eve, leading to two unlikely pairings: a sports anchor with a rock musician in crisis, and a grandmother living with Alzheimer’s with a graffiti enthusiast.

It remains the only film in Azerbaijan that is shown before New Year’s, and audiences still return to it every holiday season.

Thanks to Shahin Khalil for the poster. by @auteurcat

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6 months ago

Last month, I found myself exactly where stories want to begin—inside @yaratcontemporaryartspace in the luminous heartbeat of Baku ❤️
I arrived to teach. I left inspired.
This spark was lit by @auteurcat - @sofafilmadvancement alum, force of nature, and a builder of futures. With bold vision and relentless care, he founded @arka.culture.az and now a one-year film school that feels less like a program and more like a promise!

Rufat is exactly why SOFA once existed—and why it mattered. For over a decade, we believed in people who don’t wait for doors to open—they build them. His journey is not an exception. It’s a signal. A reminder that when you invest deeply in minds and courage, the echo travels far.
Even now, after closing that chapter, the resonance remains—messages, gratitude, quiet proof that something lasting was set in motion. More stories will follow… 😉
And none of it—none—would have happened without the fierce, generous brilliance of our team. Carrying all of that spirit in one name: our managing director @misa.mogorovic! Thank you—for the backbone, the belief, the fire 🙏
And then—YARAT.
A room full of sharp, restless, luminous filmmakers—some emerging, some already carving their place. We spoke about international distribution, about navigating careers, about staying human in an industry that often forgets to be. But truthfully? It didn’t feel like teaching. It felt like ignition.
Being the first international guest lecturer in this space was an honor that landed deeply. So did the conversations, the curiosity, the laughter—in multiple languages, all alive and dancing🥳
And outside those walls—Baku. A city that doesn’t whisper, it glows. A place where friendships are rekindled, and time stretches just enough to remind you why you fell in love with this industry in the first place. To the participants—a selection of the incredible talents:
@hansagham
@joshgunsuleymanov.art
@elnarazimova
@mv_mit
@orkhaniskandarli
@vahabphoto
@lilit_mara
@ne_aziat
@_faridaliyeva_
@izijabarli
@naraanja
@niksalien
@zeynalovcom
@rvn.mv
@e1nurrza
Keep going! Stay bold🤞Stay impossible to ignore.
I’ll be watching—along with the rest of the festival circuit. ✨ taken in Baku, Azerbaijan by @auteurcat

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5 months ago

2025 was good to me.
Two documentaries completed.
A fellowship selected. A pitching won.
Three continents crossed.
Old friends who stayed.
New friends who arrived.
New projects. New habits.
Looking toward 2026 with focus, curiosity, and gratitude. by @auteurcat

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9 months ago

Honoured to bring “Thomas Goltz: An Oil Odyssey” to Livingston, Montana — the place Tom called home when he wasn’t out chasing history in the Caucasus.

📍 Shane Center Theater, Livingston
🗓 Tuesday, Nov 25, 7 p.m.

Thomas Goltz wasn’t just a writer or a witness, he was a force of nature. In Montana, he was the neighbour who’d stop and talk. In the rest of the world, he walked into wars and untold stories with fearless curiosity.

I’ll be there for a Q&A after the screening.
Introduction by Scott McMillion.

Come celebrate a legend. by @auteurcat

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10 months ago

Not sure if I am allowed to share this yet, but this is the alternative poster 👾 Apply now. by @auteurcat

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a year ago

More information about the 1-year hands-on Film Program we’re kickstarting with @yaratcontemporaryartspace early next year 🖤🎥💥 by @auteurcat

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a year ago

🎬 Thrilled to serve as Artistic Director of the Film Edition/Program at YARAT Contemporary Art School in Baku — a year-long certificate program for aspiring directors, screenwriters, DOPs, and producers.

Led by top local and international tutors, the program takes participants through the full cycle of short film creation — from development to post-production and beyond. It culminates in a unique opportunity: real-time experience on the set of a feature film.

🗓 Starts January 2025
💥 Open to bold voices with something to say

👉 Apply now — link in bio. by @auteurcat

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a year ago

🎹✨ A GEM IN JAZZ

Vagif Mustafazadeh was a once in a generation genius.

In the Soviet Union he dared to weave the ancient soul of Azerbaijani mugham into the freedom of jazz, creating a sound the world had never heard.

At home, many failed to understand him.
Abroad, his brilliance was undeniable.

Willis Conover called him incomparable.
B.B. King admired his blues.
The Monaco Jazz Festival awarded him First Prize — the only Soviet jazz musician ever to receive it.

He lived for music, stayed true to himself, and burned too brightly.
Gone at only thirty nine.

Thus, this teaser begins the journey of bringing his extraordinary story and music to the world, the story of this rare gem in jazz. There are dozens of people I need to thank for making this happen, but I’ll dedicate a separate post to that 🖤

#AGemInJazz
#VagifMustafazadeh
#JazzMugham
#VAGIFfilm by @auteurcat

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a year ago

Thomas Goltz: An Oil Odyssey is a documentary I did on the late great American writer and journalist Thomas Goltz, one of the first foreign correspondents to chronicle the turbulent rebirth of Azerbaijan after the Soviet collapse.

In the early 1990s Goltz became a witness (and sometimes a participant) in a country fighting for independence and identity. To mark what later became known as the Contract of the Century, he once rode an IMZ sidecar motorcycle from Baku to Ceyhan, symbolically carrying the “first barrel of oil” along the path of the future Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline.

Shortly before his death, I spent several intense days interviewing him and was entrusted with his extraordinary personal archive: rare frontline footage from the first Karabakh war, encounters with presidents, ministers, diplomats and oil men in a fascinating region in transition.

This film is an attempt to give form to that story: part history, part adventure, part farewell to a restless spirit who believed in telling the truth.

🎬 Directed by Ru Hasanov

#ThomasGoltz #OilOdyssey #DocumentaryFilm #WorldCinema #IndependentFilm #CaucasusHistory #BakuToCeyhan by @auteurcat

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a year ago

Back in 2011 I was part of Generation Campus, a youth film program that brought together filmmakers from all over the world.

As an exercise we were asked to create a trailer for a film that didn’t exist — a glimpse of a story we might one day tell. I was lucky to work with an amazing group of people; the doctor you see at the beginning is Hugo Heppell, the brilliant British producer behind This Is England and Peaky Blinders.

Over the years I’ve remained very close friends with the wonderful people who organized this program, and this little experiment has stayed with me ever since. It’s a memory of discovery, play and collaboration — and a film I still dream of making one day, maybe even as my last.

🎬 Concept trailer — shot during Generation Campus 2011

#Filmmaking #GenerationCampus #Throwback #IndependentFilm #CinemaDreams by @auteurcat

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a year ago