The Azerbaijan homeland stretches from an area in the Caucasus into present-day Iran; the principal city, Baku, is an oil-rich metropolis on the Caspian Sea that is featured in Broken Bridges, directed by Rafigh Pooya. Azerbaijan was integrated into Imperial Russia in 1828. When the Russian revolution began in 1917, Azerbaijan set up an independent state, but the Red Army incorporated the country into the Soviet Union in 1920 as the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. During World War II, Stalin sent an emissary to mobilize Azerbaijanis inside Iran against the Tehran government in order to wrest some territory from Iran, an ally of Nazi Germany, on the pretext of following the principle of self-determination. Indeed, in the postwar settlement, the northern half of Iran was briefly occupied by the Soviet Union, and the southern half was occupied by Britain. However, the occupation ended shortly afterward in accordance with the postwar settlement, leaving half of the Azerbaijani people at the mercy of the Iranians, who considered them to have been disloyal. In Broken Bridges, an Azerbaijani-American filmmaker Jeff (played by Peter Reckell) voiceovers that his parents were split up as a result; his father died, and his mother was an internal refugee in Iran, unable to return to her homeland. In an effort to come to terms with that period of suffering, when he was a small child, Jeff has decided to make a documentary; he wants to return to Azerbaijan to do so, accompanied by a filmmaking friend (played by Behrooz Vossoughi). He flies first to Moscow, then to Baku. While in Baku, he recruits a university student, Jayran (played by Fatima Ibragimbekov), to play the part of his mother, and he locates a long-lost relative. Jeff then follows his friend in returning to the United States and exhibits his first film. Broken Bridges pretends to be Jeff's second film, dealing with how he made the first film. However, Broken Bridges is far more muddled than that. Director Rafigh Pooya tries to pour too many undeveloped themes into the single vessel of the film, similar to some of Michael Moore's later documentaries but without the latter's candor or humor. One factoid that is noted in the film is that it took three days for the Iranian army to arrive at the site of the abortive mission to rescue American hostages from Tehran in 1979. A second fact is that on January 10, 1990, the Soviet Union sent tanks to quell a nationalist uprising in Baku, slaughtering hundreds of peaceful demonstrators. (Azerbaijan was recognized as an independent state in 1991, though the country has mostly been governed by former Communist Party leaders.) A third point is that there are now some one million Azerbaijani refugees from a war with neighboring Armenia (which began in 1988). To weave the three historical references into the story, Jeff finds himself confronted by agents of the FBI, KGB, and Azerbaijani security personnel; in one incident he is assaulted and dumped on a road in Baku. Further embellishing the story, Jeff's American spouse Susan, (played by Rebeccah Bush) divorces him because she is unsympathetic with his pursuits regarding his homeland, and he evidently falls in love with the actress whom he recruited to play the part of his mother. As credit roll, a faint voiceover calls out for a mending of "broken bridges," but alas few in the departing audience will hear the plea. MH
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