Searching for Sateros review – The search for an elusive butterfly and the lepidopterist who named it | film

pHot journalist Rena Effendi’s father was famous in the world of butterflies; He was a specialist in Lepidoptera, and spent seven years hunting one species. Effendi dryly points out that seven years was longer than Rustam Effendi had spent in any of his four marriages—perhaps longer. (When asked about a specific number of wives, his old friend replied: “God knows best!”) Effendi was 14 years old when her father died; He was mostly absent during her childhood, and had other family while married to her mother. At his funeral, only women remember around his coffin. Years later, I discovered from his Wikipedia page that he had a butterfly named after him, which was rare and endangered. Satirus Effendi.

This tender, perceptive documentary follows Effendi as she searches for the elusive butterfly, which flies for just two weeks a year high in the Caucasus Mountains—and haunts the ghost of her father. Her mother was evasive, saying only that she would have forgiven Rustom almost anything. Effendi’s first hurdle in her mission to catch the butterfly is obtaining permission to travel to its homeland, on the border between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Effendi is Azerbaijani. Her father died as the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of collapse, after which tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan exploded and war broke out. There is now a fragile peace.

Effendi is assisted in her research by lepidopterists; At the Zoological Institute of Azerbaijan, Dmitry V. Morgun told her that butterflies all have their own personalities – there are smart types and stupid types. Of course SatyrusHer father’s butterfly is sad and depressed. Morgan accompanies Efendi in her search for… Sateros; Her father took her butterfly hunting only once in her childhood. It is a poignant and thoughtful film.