Worth Seeing
This is a beautiful movie filmed in black and white which interfaces well with the film's breathtaking simplicity. It opened my awareness to a part of the world with unfamiliar landscape and to people of a completely different culture.
I highly recommend this film.
Fabulous
I really enjoyed this film. It is a great story of irony and why not to assume anything. The setting of Kazakhstan is stunning and the characters are vibrant.
Friendship, trust, ancestry
The film is about the friendship of a Russian, fair-skinned fair-haired couple and a Kazakh dark-skinned, dark-haired couple and their trust (or lack thereof) in each other (fair/dark is essential to the plot). At time a raucous comedy, it manages to make telling points on friendship, roots and ancestry. Kyrgyz director Marat Sarulu has a light, deft touch and a sure pacing; the script (by Sarulu himself) is near perfect. There are many magical moments, some of them involving a parallel story told with shadow puppets. The action unfolds in Kazakhstan although it was actually filmed in Kyrgyzstan, in spectacular surroundings. The movie is spoken (mostly) in Russian.
By all means watch this movie. Director Sarulu (educated in Kyrgyzstan and Moscow) has directed four feature movies, one just completed. I have seen favorable reviews, but not the films themselves, and apparently they are not available in DVDs playable in Region 1.
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