Jamila 1994
In the 1940s, young Kirghiz boy falls hopelessly for Jamilla, but their love has no future.
In the 1940s, young Kirghiz boy falls hopelessly for Jamilla, but their love has no future.
In the vast plains of Kyrgyzstan, men have been cultivating a group sport with a long tradition. The aim of the game buzkashi is to steal the trophy of a dead goat from the rival team of riders, all while staying on horseback. Into this tough masculine world enters Atirkül, a woman with an enterprising spirit and a sense of humour. The film follows the everyday life of the headstrong horse lover Atirkül, whose ambition is to build her own buzkashi team of local young men to preserve the heritage of her native region. The ethnographic perspective alternates with a purely personal one, gradually revealing the possibilities of overcoming gender roles
Centaur lives a modest life with his family in rural Kyrgyzstan until he abruptly becomes the center of attention when he is caught stealing a racehorse at night. A story inspired by the myth when horses became the wings of men.
Asema, a Kyrgyz city girl visiting her boyfriends family in the countryside, is mistaken for a villager and accidentally kidnapped by Sagyn, a young shepard who was too shy to ask the young girl for marriage.
Anticipation of Love has settled in the heart of a young lady. The boundaries between dream and passion are very elusive. Life is full of physical deprivations and, of course, sensual pleasures, and the deep meaning of that all is Love. The deeper the feeling, the more intense the emotions. Each girl dreams about meeting her love one day. An experienced man helps her discover the world of passion and senses, and brings her to ‘heaven’s gate’ where the two of them will prevail. One can only imagine how many hearts were broken along the way to master the science of love. But passion blinds and soon the man becomes slave to the young woman’s sensual body. The carnal knowledge makes the girl try to subdue her love object. This is what the last film by Kim Ki-duk, shot in summer 2019 in Kyrgyzstan, is all about. The film was finished by Kim’s friends and colleagues after he unexpectedly passed away in December 2020.
Esen, a young man who has been expelled from his village, escapes with the daughter of one of the most powerful men in the village. Whilst being pursued, he is forced to fight for her hand in a battle that results in the destruction of a sacred totem tree. This puts the whole village in jeopardy, and it is up to Esen to redeem himself and save them all.
A young Kyrgyz woman is kidnapped and forced to marry. A drama about the desire for freedom in the clutches of a tradition.
At the Kyrgyzstan-Kazakhstan border, Aza and Samat work as members of a drug trafficking organization. One day, they run into Nazik, who has narrowly escaped from human traffickers.
Directed by Tolomush Okeyev.
The Chimp is the nickname of a teenage boy (with large ears) who lives in the small town of Balyktchy, Kirghizstan, a former part of the USSR in central Asia. His family is being torn apart by his dad's alcoholism, his emotions are being torn as he sees his friends pair off into couples, and his job working on the railtracks is uninspiring.
Follows the party worker who gave up his own child, and a young woman who left her baby in the garbage. After 19 years, it can be seen that the same boy and his mother are living together in a drug dispensary.
Each September, Bolot Tagaev and his family practice a centuries old tradition, harvesting walnuts in one of the oldest walnut forests in Kyrgyzstan. Over the course of a single season, director Zaheed Mawani gracefully captures delicate sequences such as a child interacting with a snake, or sacks of walnuts being laid gently across an attic bed. Stories attached to the forest are told and retold over the fire at night, adding a mythic dimension.
An amnesiac old man Zarlyk who after twenty-three years of ordeal in a foreign land, returns to his homeland. Events take place in a village in Kyrgyzstan, where he is brought by his matured son Kubat. Much has changed during his absence: the morals of the villagers, mired in the realities of a changing world, radicalization of Islam, growing crime, and moral corrosive corruption began to consume... Zarlyk’s wife Umsunai, having lost hope of his return, went into religion, married the local authority Jaichy. The bright past invades the already accustomed Umsunai’s life. But nothing touches Zarlyk. An inexplicable passion for collecting garbage replaced him everything. Will the memory return to him and will Umsunai gain lost happiness when they are pressed by tight attitudes and immorality of the clergy, when love has eclipsed recklessness?
After the Kyrgyzstan Independence in 1991, the ancient practice of Ala-Kachuu ("grab and run") returned. Some women escape the men that kidnap them, but many remain married because of tradition and the fear of scandal.
The main hero of the film is an electrician with a far greater effect on the people around him than his job defines. He is the last link in a huge energetic system and he becomes the binding bridge between the geopolitical problems of post-soviet space and the common people. The economic devastation of the country had an enormous impact on the industrial workers and yet despite the upheaval, these people did not seize to love and suffer, to have and be friends and to enjoy their lives. In particular our resilient electrician, who possesses a wonderful and open heart. He not only brings electric light (which is often out) to the lives of the inhabitants of this small city, but he also spreads the light of love, loyalty, life and mainly laughter.
A family of nomads lives in the remote high mountains of Kyrgyzstan...
In a remote Kyrgyz village, Beshkempir, an infant foundling, is taken in by five older women and later adopted by a couple unable to bear children of their own. Fast forward to his early teenage years, a pubescent Beshkempir is faced with all the problems of crushing on girls and courtship, reconciling with friends and dealing with death in the family. Above all he questions his place in the world as an adoptee.
Episodic portrait of the absurdities of Kyrgyz village life in the summer.
At the house of an elderly childless couple, about seventy years old, with poor health, living in a small village, unknown people leave a six-month-old baby. An old man and an old woman are going to hand over the child to the authorities. But having heard that young children are being sold for organs, they decide to leave the child to themselves. Caring for a baby turns the lives of older people in a completely different direction. They have an interest in life.
Egemen, who makes a living by stealing scrap metal, has a secret lover, Meyerim. She was kidnapped, married, and then divorced with her daughter, so Egemen is unable to proudly introduce Meyerim to his family.