A Prayer for the Holy Bird

A modern parable about three brothers whom life has divided as they each went their separate ways. Of their happy childhood and adolescent years together, only a black-and-white photograph remains, capturing the three young men at a table in front of their family home, and memories of the greenhouse that was their father's pride.

The Great Silk Road is the name for a mountain trade route now identifiable only by train tracks; it is on these tracks that our film finds four children at play, not far from their Kirghizstan village. A train meanders down the mountain and, following an argument, an artist is unceremoniously thrown-off a carriage and (so) eventually encounters the children.

In a remote Kyrgyz village, Beshkempir, an infant foundling, is taken in by five older women and later adopted by a couple unable to bear children of their own. Fast forward to his early teenage years, a pubescent Beshkempir is faced with all the problems of crushing on girls and courtship, reconciling with friends and dealing with death in the family. Above all he questions his place in the world as an adoptee.

A woman is led by her family to her new husband's home, to live with, presumably, his elderly mother and younger brother. Despite being forced into the marriage, she discovers that he is not such a bad catch after all but domestic bliss does not last long.

One day, Nazar walks into the studio of his partner’s ex-husband, Arsen. He looks around his computer and finds something that changes his life. Arsen is an artist who creates fictional worlds into which he loses himself. The romance between reality and the imaginary begins. Dreams and fantasies are forever intertwined with life here and now.

An ethnic Russian villager's wife gives birth to a baby that resembles a Kazakh neighbour.

In the village, in a small house by the river, an old man lives with his granddaughter. They live a simple life in harmony with the extensive nature. One day, the man’s daughter, living in the city and doing everything in order to survive in an hostile social environment, comes home and asks him to sell a house and move to live with her in the city.

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.

The story takes place in Kyrgyzstan during the first years of independence. Three brothers, Kubat, Sato and Kanat, inherit a greenhouse from their father. The oldest brother, Kubat, takes care of it. The youngest brother, Kanat, destroys it. The middle brother, Sato, is indifferent to the situation.

To avoid severe punishment for desertion, a man hides in the mountains near his native village.

As his city faces the threat of being conquered by an evil lord, a brave boy decides to take matters in his own hands.

There are revolutions and disorder in the country. However, an old man doesn't leave his motherland as many others and continues his lonely life.