Kazakh films to be actively present in Iran’s upcoming Fajr Intl. Festival

Kazakh filmmakers will be actively present in Iran’s 36th edition of Fajr International Film Festival, scheduled to be held in the capital city of Tehran this month.

The 2018 Faijr festival, which is to be held April 19-27, will premiere three feature and short movies from three Kazakh directors, including A Call to Father (2017) by Serik Aprimov, Talan (2018) by Bolat Kalymbetov, and Companions (2017) by Nurlan Sharipov will screen

The movies will be screened at the International Competition and Eastern Vista (films from Asian and Islamic Countries) sections of the festival.

A Call to Father

Aprimov, a pioneer artist in the new wave of Kazakh cinema in 1990s, is already a winner of Crystal Simorgh’s Best Film in International Competition section of Fajr Film Festival in 1991 for his first feature film The Last Stop (1990).

Aprimov’s latest work, A Call to Father, is the story of a six-year-old boy who lived in a formerly prosperous mining village, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the mine was closed and his parents were left unemployed.

The boy, who is diagnosed as having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at the start of the movie, lives in his fictional world and always dreams of going to school.

The mother of the family despises him as she blames the boy for her unhappy life, while tender attempts by the boy’s drunkard father to protect him all go in vain.

The major drama starts when the mother leaves the family for another man after the boy’s elder brother, who was considered the hope of the family, dies in a tragic incident and the ADHD child is left with his drunkard father for a long six years.

Talan

Bolat Kalymbetov is a professor of acting and directing at Arts Academy in Almaty and his 1993 movie, The Last Cold Days, won the Torino International Film Festival of Young Cinema Special Jury prize and FIPRESCI Prize-Special Mention.

Kalymbetov’s 2018 feature film, Talan, is about two boys, Tagai and Kerim, who survive in different circumstances, as one of them takes the path of revenge whilst the other chooses the path of love and forgiveness.

Tagai lives in a settlement where the people are plagued with the new power of a military dictatorship. Kerim lives amongst wolves in the mountain forests.

The historical drama is based on true events in the twentieth century in Kazakhstan in which the main characters experience a historic juncture when society was trying to erase the traces of its past to build a happy future.

Talan shows how the experience in Central Asia changed people’s lives with dramatic ramifications such as war and hunger, while it seemed impossible for the society to return to what it used to have before.

Companions

Nurlan Sharipov began his filmmaking career in 2017 and his 15-minute short movie, Companions (2017), will premiere in the Eastern Vista section of Fajr.

The short movie is about a man who blames his wife for the negative conditions of their children, but he suddenly changes his mind after a dramatic turn of events.

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