{"id":232,"date":"2026-07-25T07:05:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T07:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agorafilmspr.com\/?page_id=232"},"modified":"2026-07-25T07:36:56","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T07:36:56","slug":"sermon-to-the-void","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/agorafilmspr.com\/index.php\/sermon-to-the-void\/","title":{"rendered":"Sermon to the Void"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Sermon to the Void
<\/strong>by Hilal Baydarov<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Azerbaijan \/ Mexico \/ Turkey | 2025 | 112′ | Color<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Festivals:<\/strong>
Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the film:<\/strong>
As the world comes to an end, Shah Ismail embarks on a quest for the Water of Life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Director’s Statement:<\/strong>
I\u2019ve never had a serious reason to begin this film \u2014 or any of my other films.
Nothing in this world has ever compelled me, encouraged me, or inspired me to make cinema. It\u2019s only that, sometimes, an unexpected and inner urgency rises within me \u2014 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 Bo\u015flu\u011fa X\u00fctb , which took eleven months, it wasn\u2019t 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\u2019t know who these characters are.
I don\u2019t know why they enter the film \u2014 or why they leave.
I can\u2019t 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\u2019t the true self we seek hidden in a place entirely without colour, without taste, without story \u2014 in the endlessness of the desert?
And when a soul has once tasted the force of pure witnessing, isn\u2019t embracing the curse of the desert as one\u2019s homeland the truest Sermon to the Void?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the director:<\/strong>
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 B\u00e9la 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 R\u00e9el; 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 Cin\u00e9ma du R\u00e9el. 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:
<\/strong>2025: Sermon to the Void<\/strong>
2023:\u00a0Sermon to the\u00a0Birds<\/strong>
2022:\u00a0Sermon to the\u00a0Fish
<\/strong>2021:\u00a0Crane Lantern<\/strong>
2020:\u00a0In Between Dying<\/strong>
2020:\u00a0Nails in my\u00a0brain<\/strong>
2019:\u00a0When the Persimmons Grew<\/strong>
2019:\u00a0Mother and\u00a0Son<\/strong>
2018:\u00a0One Day in Selimpasha<\/strong>
2018:\u00a0Birthday<\/strong>
2018:\u00a0Hills without Names<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Sermon to the Voidby Hilal Baydarov 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\u2019ve never had a serious reason to begin this film \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"full-width","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-232","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agorafilmspr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agorafilmspr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agorafilmspr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agorafilmspr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agorafilmspr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/agorafilmspr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":236,"href":"https:\/\/agorafilmspr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/232\/revisions\/236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agorafilmspr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}