Agora Films

Azerbaijan / Mexico / Turkey | 2025 | 112′ | Color

Festivals:
Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition)

About the film:
As the world comes to an end, Shah Ismail embarks on a quest for the Water of Life.

Director’s Statement:
I’ve never had a serious reason to begin this film — or any of my other films.
Nothing in this world has ever compelled me, encouraged me, or inspired me to make cinema. It’s only that, sometimes, an unexpected and inner urgency rises within me — one so strong it refuses to let me stay still.
My understanding of cinema is not built on knowing, but on not knowing. Not even knowing anything about the characters. While making Boşluğa Xütb , which took eleven months, it wasn’t until the fifth or sixth month that I found the name of the central character. The others remained unnamed.
And to this day, I still don’t know who these characters are.
I don’t know why they enter the film — or why they leave.
I can’t find their reflection in real life either. They simply dwell in the vastness of the desert. They are not the kind of figures one would encounter on a journey with any intention of return. After all, isn’t the true self we seek hidden in a place entirely without colour, without taste, without story — in the endlessness of the desert?
And when a soul has once tasted the force of pure witnessing, isn’t embracing the curse of the desert as one’s homeland the truest Sermon to the Void?

About the director:
Hilal Baydarov is a writer and director from Baku. While he was in high school, he won the national mathematics championships twice, in 2004 and 2005. In 2011, he led the Azerbaijani team at the Informatics Olympiad. After completing a master’s degree in computer science, Baydarov studied at the Sarajevo Film Academy under acclaimed Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr. Since then, he has completed an award-winning trilogy of documentaries: WHEN THE PERSIMMONS GREW (2019), which won the Heart of Sarajevo for Best Documentary, as well as the Interreligious Award and a Special Jury Mention at Visions du Réel; MOTHER AND SON (2019), which had its premiere in competition at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam; and NAILS IN MY BRAIN (2020), which premiered at Cinéma du Réel. His IN BETWEEN DYING (2020) premiered in competition at the Venice Film Festival, and CRANE LANTERN (2021) premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival. After that, he started work on the WAR TALES trilogy, for which the first two installments are complete: SERMON TO THE FISH (2022), which was presented at the Locarno Film Festival, and SERMON TO THE BIRDS (2023), which screened in Tokyo. He is now working on the final film of the trilogy, SERMON TO THE VOID.
Filmography:
2025: Sermon to the Void
2023: Sermon to the Birds
2022: Sermon to the Fish
2021: Crane Lantern
2020: In Between Dying
2020: Nails in my brain
2019: When the Persimmons Grew
2019: Mother and Son
2018: One Day in Selimpasha
2018: Birthday
2018: Hills without Names

Press Coverage:
– This film follows a man who searches for the Water of Life as the world comes to an end (Screen)
– Inventive and conceptually daring (In Review Online)
– A hypnotic, provocative and deeply complex experience (ICSFilm)
– Considering the scale of the paintings shown here, it would be best to watch this work in the movie theatre (DMovies)