When Daniel Edelstyn discovered his grandmother's journals in the attic of his family home, he was inspired. Born into a wealthy and privileged Jewish family in the Ukraine, Maroussia Zorokovich was a writer, dancer and painter before the Bolshevik revolution rewrote her destiny, and the irresistible romance of her life took a powerful grip on Edelstyn. Delving into his family history, he travels to the country of his forebears, and, in the depressed village of Dubouviazovka where his great grandfather's estate was situated, he discovers a vodka distillery his ancestors once owned. Edelstyn has the notion that he could best serve his family's legacy by re-branding the vodka made there in the hope of reviving the village's prosperity. How to Re-Establish a Vodka Empire is a dizzying mesh of stories and techniques that ambitiously combines a documentary about entering the alcohol industry, an investigation of one family's history and a recreation of key historical events of the 20th century. It's sincere, charming and inventive filmmaking, with Edelstyn himself at its centre, a man striving to define what his role in all this is, flitting between genealogist, storyteller and businessman.
Michael Hayden
London Film Festival