How to Re-Establish a Vodka Empire

Ukraine 2012, 75 mins
Director: Daniel Edelstyn

Synopsis

HOW TO RE-ESTABLISH A VODKA EMPIRE charts the journey of film director Dan Edelstyn as he tracks down his long-lost Jewish Ukrainian heritage, and then attempts to re-launch his great grandfather’s once glorious vodka empire.

The film is a whirlwind journey back in time to the life of the director's grandmother Maroussia Zorokovich - writer, dancer, painter and romantic - and follows her exciting and turbulent journey during the 1917 Russian Revolution, out of Ukraine, across Europe and into exile in Belfast.

But it is also a moving and comic account of a modern-day struggle to get a business started in the cutthroat world of the drinks industry. It is a meditation on loss and identity, and a celebration of family and life itself, cleverly disguised as a screwball business adventure.