Chinghiz Aitmatov

It has been a lifelong dream of Kyrgyz director Melis Ubukeyev to create an elaborate film version of the Kyrgyz national epic 'Manas'. He spent years working with the National Academy of Sciences of Kyrgyzstan to gather material for this film project, which would ultimately remain a dream. However, the director's efforts were not in vain: Not only did he make films in 1962 and 1988 about Manasçı – the revered oral storytellers who have preserved the epic for generations through melodic recitation –, but in 1995, to mark the 1,000th anniversary of 'Manas', he also created a beguiling essay film that not only recounts the epic’s sweeping narrative through a mix of breathtaking imagery and opulent costumes, but also weaves it into a semi-documentary exploration of Kyrgyz history and identity. Once almost impossible to find, the film has recently been restored by the film studio Kyrgyzfilm and uploaded to YouTube in 4K.

İlyas, a truck driver from Istanbul, arrives in a remote village to work on a dam construction project and meets a young village woman named Asya. They fall madly in love and get married. However, their life together is fraught with conflict. When İlyas cheats on Asya, the final straw in their relationship, she takes her son and begins wandering without knowing where she is going, until a familiar hand reaches out to help her selflessly.

In post-Civil War 1923, a young Red Army veteran is sent to the mountainous Kirghiz region of Kyrgyzstan to establish the first school. The former soldier becomes a teacher, bringing Leninist doctrine to the remote Moslem area where elders forbade children to attend school. He falls in love with one of his students, but the young woman is sold by her father to a wealthy chieftain.

In a remote Kyrgyz village, a mother navigates daily life as her family is drawn into the upheaval of World War II. Left behind to tend the land and hold her household together, she clings to hope amid growing uncertainty. As seasons pass, the quiet weight of absence and memory shapes her world. A deeply personal story of endurance, Mother’s Field captures the emotional cost of war from the perspective of those who wait.

The story of Tanabai the blacksmith, father of three children, who upon his return from war became a herdsman, and his tragic love for the soldier’s widow Byubyudzhan. The lyrical poem has an additional storyline concerning the horse Gyulsary and his master Tanabai.

In the 1940s, young Kirghiz boy falls hopelessly for Jamilla, but their love has no future.

Bakai is an old shepherd who lives in the country while his children have long grown accustomed to life in the city. When his youngest son pays him a visit, Bakai wants him to stay and help with the rigors of rural living.

During the second world war two friends work at a remote railway station in the steppes. When one dies the other's request to bury him according to Islamic rituals in a sacred place is denied by the Soviet authorities, who use that place for rocket testing.