Zhanar Shokpanova

Gabit, a physics teacher and father of five, is struggling to make ends meet when he happens upon a bag containing a large sum of cash buried in the snow-covered field outside his apartment building. Suddenly his life becomes comfortable, with him repaying bank loans and treating his family to expensive meals and gifts. But anxiety over where the money came from soon begins to weigh on him.

Windy steppes of Kazakhstan. Starving people ravenously eat donkeys and their weaker comrades. Frantic, raw, gripping, and cannibalistic western inspired by testimonies of the historical Great Famine of the 1930s. Ruthless Jupar with her two boys Jolan and Boshay runs for survival to reach her childhood village with hopes to find living relatives. A mother with no tears to cry endures rains, sandstorms, feverish famine, poisoned crops, hungry vultures, rotten meat, and greedy betrayals. Jupar will have to steal, cut throats, and protect her and others’ children to witness fates worse than death.