Telling women’s stories in Central Asia: reporting from Qyzqaras Film Festival

Efforts to build and sustain independent film culture in contemporary Central Asia are as vital as they are difficult. Years of underfunding in the arts, sclerotic cultural institutions, and the ongoing threat of censorship have created a challenging ecosystem in which to pursue critical, investigative, and spirited filmmaking. Of course, this has not deterred the region’s artists and critics. In Kazakhstan, for instance, directors have been grappling with a range of social upheavals throughout the 2020s, from the resignation of longstanding president Nursultan Nazarbayev to protest movements and the place of women in a patriarchal society; in Uzbekistan, the Tashkent Film School has been building a young and engaged community of filmmakers and local audiences.

One of the most promising developments in recent years has been the establishment of the Qyzqaras Film Festival in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Dedicated to showcasing films by women from Central Asia and beyond, Qyzqaras has just called time on its third annual edition – already some feat, given the logistical challenges faced by this kind of independent cultural endeavour. This year’s programme again highlighted the festival’s commitment to tackling the issues afflicting Central Asia head on – see Natalia Uvarova’s Malika (2025), set among the small and often inaccessible Ingush diaspora in Kazakhstan, or Erke Dzhumakmatova and Emil Atageldijev’s Kurak (2025), which was banned in the directors’ home country of Kyrgyzstan after being denied a distribution licence.

Qyzqaras’ efforts to contribute to a critical culture in the region are reflected too in its Critics’ Lab, which offers a platform to emerging film writers from Central Asia. Klassiki is delighted to be publishing reviews of some of the highlights of the Qyzqaras programme written by this year’s Lab participants, which captures some of the most pressing issues facing Central Asia – and Central Asian cinema – in the 2020s: from emigration to patriarchal violence, ecological collapse, and neo-colonialism.

Illuminating the absence: Isabelle Kalandar’s Another Birth

Alua Imanalina

Set in an isolated mountain village in the mountainous Badakhshan province, Tajik filmmaker Isabelle Kalandar’s debut unfurls like a dreamlike rite of passage. We follow young Parastu, darting through narrow village alleyways, door hinges creaking, dust flickering, before she settles down among friends to watch fairy tales on the village’s only television set. Enchanted by an adult world not yet hers, she is hungry for its fragments: conversations, a labour half-seen through a roof opening. The camera lingers on her unblinking gaze as she peers through doors left ajar and weathered openings.

Her father is absent. Her mother’s presence feels ghostly. Her grandfather, bedridden and engulfed in grief, calls out for his son’s return. Fearing he will lose his taste for life, Parastu sets out to find her father, seeking help from Pairi, a powerful fairy said to appear only to the good. The story drifts between the mundane and the mystical – a liminality made literal in the vast landscapes Parastu crosses. Her mother, whose voice is heard off-screen, recites the poems of Iranian feminist poet Forough Farrokhzad, the only way she has to open up to her daughter. Kalandar never explains the father’s absence, instead gesturing to its consequences: a village depleted by labour migration overseas, and the slow, suspended lives of those left behind.

The film’s poetry shines through strongest in its deployment of negative space and absence: the missing father, desolate scenery, information withheld, all of which mirror gaps in Parastu’s understanding of the world. Switching between narrative sequences and disembodied poetic recitations, Kalandar extends the Farrokhzad’s influence into the film’s very structure. The opening is daring: diegetic sound and a repeated choreography of everyday actions synthesising into a single captivating rhythm. Towards the end, however, the film loses precision, though the tenderness survives. At the film’s climax, the mother, completely lost in grief, walks into a lake to drown herself, only to be saved by the Pair, the supernatural figure through whom a sliver of hope and rebirth might emerge.

Alua Imanalina is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Downstream from women’s stories: Kristina Mikhailova’s River Dreams

Artur Kazakbaev

Kristina Mikhailova constructs a portrait of contemporary Kazakhstan from a female perspective, conversing with women living along the Aksay River in the south of the country, as well as with activists, artists, and other women associated with rivers. Mikhailova begins each interview by asking, “What kind of river are you?”. The question allows the subjects’ abstract reflections to gradually flow into direct statements about their dreams, pains, and lived experiences. The film blends documentary and narrative approaches: women’s stories alternate with riverscape footage, performances from the protagonists, and archival footage – including a recording of the murder of Saltanat Nukenova, who was killed by her husband, former Kazakh minister Kuandyk Bishimbayev, in a vicious assault caught on CCTV. This high-profile crime drew attention both within the country and globally to the question of violence against women. While this hybrid form might initially seem disjointed or uneven, it ultimately captures the inherent contradictions of the region. Russian language speech gives way to Kazakh; traditionalist views overlap with feminist slogans; and the director finds beauty even in the pollution of the local river.

The film does not immediately captivate the viewer, gradually immersing us into the contexts that inform it, whether Kazakh, female, or personal. The conversational fragments highlighted in the first half of the film feel like a prelude: they are filled with humour yet remain politically pointed. From then on, the protagonists’ stories evolve into more complex emotional revelations. The narratives that emerge relate to incarcerated women, survivors of violence, women who have resisted. Mikhailova employs a method of radical vulnerability at every level of the narrative – from preserving “awkward” turns of phrase to sharing stories of traumatic experiences. The director is likewise unafraid to weave herself into the film’s fabric, infusing it not only with her vision but also with her own presence and personal experience. This transforms the picture from a detached study into a personal observation that grows increasingly compelling with every frame.

The hybrid format that Mikhailova in all this represents a particularly complex undertaking, one that is not always successful. River Dreams suffers from the fact that its conceit is reduced to serving as a springboard for exploring female vulnerability; the river’s own potential remains unrealised, reduced to a decorative or metaphoric function. It is important to note here the intuitive process by which the film was created. Having spent five years filming, interviewing over a hundred women, and allowing each to share whatever she deemed important, it is only natural that Mikhailova’s artistic choices would be driven by intuition rather than a meticulously planned narrative structure. The film’s trajectory shifts according to where the river’s current flows: to a Muslim school, to reflections on decolonisation, or to a game of “Kazakhstan or Turkey?” This constant interplay of contrasts most accurately captures the mood of a region woven together from cultural contradictions, women’s hopes, and a struggle that doesn’t cease.

Artur Kazakbaev is a film critic and podcaster from Kyrgyzstan who writes for Synchy.

Kyrgyz immigration from back to front: Nurzhamal Karamoldoeva’s Only Heaven Knows   

Dastan Ryskulov

In her debut feature, Nurzhamal Karamoldoeva crafts a naturalistic portrait of a Kyrgyz immigrant, bringing to the screen the present-day life of Chicagostan – the colloquial name for a major hub of the Kyrgyz diaspora in the United States. Personal aspirations, intergenerational pressures, and social demands form the contours of this community, where characters from the centre to the periphery reveal a range of perspectives shaped by immigration. There is Mira (Malika Kanatova), a nail technician and patient striver at the outset of her immigration journey. Then there is her two-faced husband Eric (Dauren Tashkenbaev), a responsible hustler by day and a compulsive gambler by night. His mother, concerned solely with her son, also impinges on Mira. The cast of supporting characters include a wannabe kingpin and a watchful uncle, among many others.

These characterisations can feel formulaic at times, compressing the complexity of the immigrant experience into archetypes. Yet to some extent, individual depth is being sacrificed here in favour of a collective portrait – one in which the accumulation of figures creates a panoramic view of the diaspora. Only Heaven Knows then builds on this breadth, adding texture to the outline. One can see it in the location scouting, carried out with the strong support of the diaspora, lending the story a distinctly Chicagostani spatiality. One can hear it in the dialogue, where each character’s blend of Kyrgyz, Russian, and English reflects not only their individual predispositions but also broader collective issues, such as a widening generational gap.

With this backdrop set, Mira can come into focus. She is a fluid character where others are fixed. By forcing the pressures generated by the community onto Mira and demonstrating her non-acceptance of the status quo versus the reluctance of others to change, Karamoldoeva reveals a seldom-explored dimension of immigration. Mira’s position within this onscreen Chicagostan – both representative of new beginnings and a recreated “home from home” – allows us to question the indispensability of one’s own community within immigration narratives. As Mira reaches for the former and clashes with the latter, the film posits that belonging is not automatic; that some are disproportionately burdened by the community, and that new freedom often demands a complete leap into the unknown.

Dastan Ryskulov is an emerging film critic and curator from Bishkek, whose recent work includes a collaboration with The Cinematheque in Vancouver.

Can I divorce him too? Natalia Uvarova’s Malika

Aidana Amanzhol

When a mother loses her child, the child loses their childhood. For Ingush and Chechen women, losing custody after remarriage can be as castrating as the abrupt loss of childhood is for the child. Malika, the feature-length debut by Natalia Uvarova, takes this painful reality as its starting point, following a diasporic Ingush family-in-the-making who run a flower shop in Almaty, Kazakhstan. For audiences outside Central Asia, stories rooted in Kazakh life are already few and far between; rarer still are those delving into Kazakhstan’s tiny Ingush diaspora, whose story has found new soil here partly because Russia’s crackdown on independent artists and cultural expression has made such stories increasingly difficult to tell. Fittingly, at its Qyzqaras premiere, Almaty’s small Ingush diaspora came out in force, bearing flowers and erupting in an ovation at seeing themselves on the big screen.

Malika (Izabella Khampieva), a riotous 12-year-old, is a child of divorce. One classmate helpfully lays out the rules: under Ingush customary law, if Malika’s mother Roza (Marena Kharsieva) remarries, Malika must move in with her father, who has already re-tied the knot. A rosy idyll under her mother’s warm wing is sweeter to Malika than settling with a father who seems intent on dulling her shine, ordering her to wipe the glitter off her face while keeping his phone permanently glued to his ear. “Can I divorce him too?” Malika pleads, setting off a trite will-she-won’t-she cycle as she tries to subordinate her mother’s desire to remarry to her own.

While Uvarova’s storytelling instincts are strong – bringing attention to women caught in a custody system shaped by patriarchal Ingush culture is an urgent matter – the film gropes towards a formal language equal to the vitality of its subject. Its melodramatic core (heightened stakes, familiar dialogue, and mother-daughter rituals of dress and makeup) is layered with the visual and sonic vocabulary of art cinema. At times, its excessively rosy, girlish imagery feels like putting a hat on a hat, while ominous chimes cue emotions the drama might otherwise have allowed to emerge on their own. Still, there is something meaningful in a story like this taking root at all; Uvarova’s debut suggests a filmmaker with room to grow into the full expressive potential of her material.

Aidana Amanzhol is a filmmaker and film writer based in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Her work explores cinema, culture, and politics across Central Asia.

A patriarchal pattern: Erke Dzhumakmatova and Emil Atageldijev’s Kurak

Karlygach Madynova

Set in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, the mosaic-like narrative of Kurak follows a group of interconnected protagonists, centring on two young female friends and classmates, Jyldyz and Meerim, who become embroiled in the schemes of powerful men. Meerim, who supports her family by secretly working as a webcam model, is blackmailed by a law enforcement officer, while Jyldyz falls prey to the son of a minister, who drugs and rapes her. The title of the film refers to a traditional Central Asian practice of patchwork; similarly, Kurak aims to bring multiple, wide-ranging female stories together: from Jyldyz’s mother trying to avenge her daughter’s rape to Jamila, a TV journalist covering their story. Wintertime Bishkek is presented here as geometrically rigid and claustrophobic, a place where justice always feels out of reach and women are ensnared in cycles of generational patriarchal violence.

Kurak is firmly rooted in local context and collective memory: the film opens with real-life archive footage from the controversial 2019 Feminnale – a landmark feminist art exhibition – and the 2020 march for women’s rights, both of which were sabotaged by right-wing nationalist groups and censored by the government. The countless stories of domestic abuse, bride kidnapping, and femicide in Kyrgyzstan are reflected in the stories of Kurak, once again reminding us of this critical problem in our society. This is by no means the first time that Kyrgyz directors have shone a spotlight on this topic. Recent years in particular have seen a plethora of films, mostly horror allegories, turning these themes into plot twists, with gender-based violence resurfacing as a bogeyman in Burning (2024, dir. Radik Eshimov), Shut Down (2025, dir. Ilgiz Kuvatbek and Shamil Bekbolsun Uulu), and Kassandra (2026, dir. Bekzat Pirmatov). Directed by male filmmakers, these films are exploitative and superficial in their treatment of the subject matter, packaging and selling trauma for genre thrills.

But where does this violence come from? What makes men commit these crimes? Kurak, unlike the aforementioned films, reflects on rape culture: casual jokes about kidnapping a girl; rapists’ obsessive talk about virginity; a background lecture on role of women in the Kyrgyz epic Manas. While at times heavy-handed – its urgency and intense emotions hinder its formal decisions, leaving the film inconsistent in where and when to be explicit – what sets Kurak apart is that it aspires neither to genre nor to arthouse cinematic norms. Instead, it is a bold intersectional statement, demonstrating the entanglement of class and gender-based violence alongside its depiction of nepotism, a failed and corrupt criminal justice system, and institutionalised religious complicity.

This political edge has unfortunately come at a cost: the Kyrgyz government denied the film a certificate, effectively shutting down its planned premiere during the Bishkek Film Festival (thus making Qyzqaras the Central Asian premiere) and rendering any public screening impossible. The system criticised in the film is thus preventing it from reaching its audience, first and foremost, the people of Kyrgyzstan, for whom it was intended.

Karlygach Madynova is a media student and emerging film critic from Kyrgyzstan, now based in Almaty.

Explore our collection of Central Asian titles here.