In the sleepy village of Lahic, high in the mountains of Azerbaijan, farmer Tapdig becomes obsessed with the idea of buying a large, European cow that would provide more milk and calves than the puny local heifers. Much to the chagrin of his long-suffering wife, and despite the extremely hostile attitude of the village elders, who believe such imports will erode the moral standards of the village, he succeeds. His strapping black-and-white purchase, whom he names Madonna (“because she’s beautiful like the singer,”) does indeed change his fortunes, although not necessarily in the way he expected. Packing a subtle contemporary resonance given the discussion of Azerbaijan’s relationship to the European Union, this is a pleasant, agricultural fable for our times, although be warned that it moves with the stately pace of a Friesian traversing a muddy field. It has played at various documentary film festivals already, but at times it feels noticeably sculpted for the camera, as the participants self-consciously pretend they aren’t being observed. In other words, this is a bit like one of those postmodern half-doc, half-fiction features that Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf used to specialise in.
