How to Re-establish a Vodka Empire
Logline
Director Dan Edelstyn goes in search of his great-grandfather's distillery, expropriated by the Bolsheviks and now nearly bankrupt in an impoverished Ukrainian village. But filmmaker turns social entrepreneur when he decides to re-brand and export the vodka breathing new life, wealth and dignity into the forgotten village and its people.
Synopsis
How to Re-establish a Vodka Empire brings to life the vivid and unique riches to rags story of a romantic young girl caught in the middle of the Bolshevik Revolution. Using the recently discovered manuscript of Maroussia Zorokovich as the key to the narrative, her grandson Dan Edelstyn travels back in time to uncover his family history. It's a subjective history co-written by Dan and his grandmother, and brought to life with German expressionist influenced dramatic sequences and Dan's trademark flair. Woven into this is Dan's quest to reopen and rebrand the vodka factory with the old family name and the year it was expropriated – Zorokovich 1917. Dan must act the showman-entrepreneur and risk everything on the vodka empire.
Director
Dan Edelstyn
Executive Producer
Christopher Hird
Collaborators
Scottish Documentary Institute
Commonwealth Broadcasting Association
Shoresh Foundation
JFS Pollitzer Charitable Trust
