FEATURE DOCUMENTARY

How to Re-Establish a Vodka Empire has been featured in The Guardian, The Times, The Independent and received a **** review from Empire Magazine.

go to www.myvodkaempire.com for more information.

SYNOPSIS

British filmmaker Daniel Edelstyn became mildly obsessed after discovering his grandmother’s journals in the attic of his family home. Maroussia Zorokovich, born into a wealthy Ukrainian Jewish family, was a budding writer and dancer before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution rewrote her destiny and sent her into exile. When Edelstyn travels to the Ukraine in search of his roots and discovers that the vodka distillery opened by his great grandfather in 1904 is still in operation, he decides—despite his utter lack of business experience—to become a liquor entrepreneur and import the vodka to the UK. This funny, charming documentary employs an ambitious mixture of vérité cinematography and inventive animated sequences created by and starring the artist Hilary Powell (Edelstyn’s wife).

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

“How to Re-Establish a Vodka Empire is a meditation on loss and identity and a celebration of family and life itself, cleverly disguised as a screwball business adventure. This film is so special to me as it has allowed me to explore my family’s history and discover beautiful and tragic stories I could never have guessed were just below the surface. It’s a very personal story of me and my grandmother Maroussia Zorokovich, but I do hope it will speak to audiences in a universal way.”

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