Central Asia’s ‘Children of Independence’ Win Festival Plaudits, Look to Grow Nascent Post-Soviet Screen Biz
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Three decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, an emerging generation of filmmakers born and raised in the independent countries of Central Asia is giving an exhilarating charge to the region’s cinema and helping to put their unheralded industries on the map.
Leading Kazakh film critic Gulnara Abikeyeva says these “children of independence” are bringing a “new attitude” to the screen and giving a jolt of energy to emerging industries that for decades were under Moscow’s thumb.
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“The production of films is growing very fast in all Central Asian countries,” she says. “There have appeared so many young production studios who can make movies with public or private money.”
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, what Abikeyeva describes as the “euphoria of freedom” caught hold across its former Central Asian republics, which include Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. Filmmakers who previously had to submit their scripts to all-powerful Soviet state-backed committees no longer needed Moscow’s approval to make their movies. “There was a sense that we can do anything we want,” she says.
However, that energy quickly butt against the realities of filmmaking in newly independent countries who had long relied on Moscow for the financing, promotion and distribution of films. Whatever excitement was born from the collapse of the Soviet-era quota system that dictated how many movies could be produced in each republic, independent film industries couldn’t be so easily built from scratch.
In the decades since, there have been hopeful signs for a post-Soviet revival, particularly in the growing Kazakh and Uzbek industries, which Abikeyeva estimates each release 60-80 feature films a year.
Emerging talents from Central Asia include Kazakhstan’s Adilkhan Yerzhanov, who bowed his latest feature, “Assault,” in Rotterdam and Berlin last year, and Emir Baigazin, who competed at the Berlinale with “Harmony Lessons.” Other rising filmmakers from the region include Kyrgyzstan’s Mirlan Abdykalykov, whose feature debut, “Bride Kidnapping,” was well-received out of Busan, and Uzbekistan’s Shokir Kholikov, whose first feature, “Sunday,” was named best film in the Asian New Talent section of this year’s Shanghai Film Festival.
Challenges nevertheless persist across the region. Buoyed by a surge in investment, Kazakhstan introduced a new film law in 2019 that sought to overhaul the industry and laid out provisions for a 30% cash rebate. But that system remains on ice amid the post-COVID recovery, as well as the gradual return of stability after several years of political turmoil in the country.
The most populous of the former Soviet republics, Uzbekistan, has seen a boom in the production of commercial titles aimed at the domestic market — prompting Abikeyeva to label it a “Central Asian Bollywood” — but it remains “difficult to film independent movies,” says “Sunday” director Kholikov.
Kholikov’s debut feature (pictured, top) was largely financed by the Uzbek government, which awarded the director one billion Uzbek sum (around $100,000 at the time) after his short, “Choy,” took home the Grand Prix at the Entr’2 Marches International Film Festival in Cannes in 2020. While that funding was welcome, it wasn’t necessarily sufficient to mount an ambitious production: Kholikov says he decided to set “Sunday” entirely in a small Uzbek village in part because budgetary constraints restricted him to a single location.
Across the border in Kyrgyzstan, which flourished during the “Kyrgyz Miracle” of the Soviet era but has yet to regain its standing, the industry is nevertheless “much more vibrant [than a decade ago], producing a diverse range of both commercial and auteur films,” says Abdykalykov, the son of veteran Kyrgyz filmmaker Aktan Abdykalykov, whose “Bride Kidnapping” was praised by Variety’s Jessica Kiang as a “hard-edged but intensely compassionate portrait” of a woman who falls victim to a brutal Kyrgyz tradition.
“The rise of digital technology has made filmmaking more accessible and cost-effective. In terms of cinematic language, there’s now greater freedom to express diverse ideas, embracing a wider variety of genres and more experimental approaches,” he says.
In an encouraging sign for the burgeoning industry of Tajikistan, meanwhile, the country entered a film — Behrouz Sebt Rasoul’s “Melody,” a co-production with Iran — in the international feature film Oscar race for the first time in 18 years. (Kyrgyzstan is also being repped this year, with Aktan Abdykalykov’s “This Is What I Remember.”) In Turkmenistan, however, which is largely isolated from the international community, production is sparse.
Efforts to boost cooperation between the neighboring countries, which have a long, shared history and represent a market of nearly 80 million people, have proceeded in fits and starts, thanks in no small part to the pandemic. The long-running Eurasia International Film Festival, which held its 15th edition in 2019 and was a focal point for filmmakers from the region, has yet to mount a post-COVID reboot. Ditto the Almaty Film Festival, which launched amid great fanfare in Kazakhstan’s cultural capital in 2018 but is yet to host a sophomore edition.
However, the launch this year of the Alternativa Film Project — which is backed by the California-based tech company inDrive and recently doled out $100,000 in cash awards to filmmakers from the region — is perhaps a sign that other initiatives will step in to fill the gap in supporting and promoting emerging Central Asian talent.
Despite the challenges, Kyrgyz filmmaker Dastan Madalbekov is among the directors who see a bright future ahead for the region’s rising talents. “Within the last two to three years, our young filmmakers have received more opportunities to secure financing for their films or to get knowledge where this financing can be found,” he says, citing a generation of Central Asian directors who are attending festivals, film labs, pitching sessions, and other industry events. “Personally, both as a representative of this profession and as a viewer, I’d like to hear brave new voices.”
“People aren’t familiar with a specific Central Asian aesthetic,” adds Kazakhstan’s Aisultan Seitov, whose feature debut, “Qas” (Hunger), won best director honors in the Asian New Talent section of this year’s Shanghai Film Festival. “This is what gives me passion. This is a broad field. You can go anywhere, and if you can succeed with a certain style, you can actually create the portrait of film from Central Asia.”
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