Unreal Love

The story of a Chinese-trained opera singer living in a remote Kazakh village with her grandmother and her ailing young niece. The bulk of the action consists of the steadfast heroine trying to make enough money to get the rare and costly medicine that may save her niece's life. What makes the film so thrilling is that this elemental situation allows the director and his cast of non-actors to illuminate the details of everyday life: reality and fiction dissolve into each other, and the audience achieves a heightened awareness of simple activities like the cooking of a meal, teaching a child to count in Chinese and English, visits to the doctor or the marketplace. Entirely improvised by the filmmaker and his actors.

A tragic conflict between two brothers. The younger Adil falls in love with the girl that the elder Rustem loves. Elya reciprocates Adil...

In a poor provincial town, the ragamuffin boys are frenziedly drilled for combat, and at nights the local elite, gathered in a pool room, boasts of fictitious biographies, while bands of boys amuse themselves with bloody fights on trashy vacant plots… One of the most vivid staples of the postwar childhood were pigeons. They could be bought, sold or stolen. One day a beautiful white dove appeared over the town. Risking his life, Ivan caught the White. And immediately became the target of the "pigeon" mafia…

May Day in Alma Ata, 1979. Valera, Karim and Jacob are a crew of hard-partying, drug-taking teenagers looking for kicks during their spring holiday, and they break into the bar at the Highland ice rink and steal an electric guitar. When Valera's dad finds the guitar, he turns his son over to the police, who brutalize him and leave him severely wounded on the outskirts of town. Karim and Jacob kill Valera's father, then hide their friend and do their best to keep him alive.

A tale of star-crossed lovers set on the lonesome plains of Kazakhstan.

A young woman gathers around her several women who have suffered from domestic violence. Their distinctive feature becomes the red trousers they wear, in which they secretly track down their abusers and intricately take revenge on them for the suffering they caused.

The old man’s last wish – to fulfill the Kazakh tradition and put his grandson on a stallion – is shattered by everyday life, bureaucracy and loneliness, remaining unfulfilled. The music of Johann Bach on the dombra emphasizes pain and hope.