The Klassiki Kino Club: Tough Kids

We’re a few weeks into season seven, so it’s about time to open up the Kino Club, our watch-along exploration of the Klassiki catalogue. For this edition, we invited one of our favourite critics, Botagoz Koilybayeva, who’s written for the Klassiki Journal among many other outlets. As always, we asked Botagoz to pick a film from our library that she hadn’t seen before, watch it, then jump on a call to discuss. Her pick was Tough Kids, the 1983 social drama about teen delinquency and redemption by the sorely underrated Soviet director Dinara Asanova.

Botagoz and host Sam Goff get into Asanova’s tragically short career and her controversial working methods, as well as the social and emotional undercurrents of her filmography.

Watch along with us on Klassiki now! And make sure to check out Botagoz’s writing on Ali Khamraev and the politics of contemporary Kazakh film.

Get in touch: podcast@klassiki.online.

Listen above or head to your favourite podcast app to subscribe now. The Klassiki Podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, Audible, and more.

Intro music by Juliet Merchant.