10th Eurasia International Film Festival Almaty

The 10th edition of Eurasia International Film Festival took place from 15-20 September in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The festival program comprised an international competition of 12 feature films and several sidebar events, such as a section of “Dynamic Kazakh Cinema”, a retrospective of Sergei Soloviev, who celebrated his 70th birthday this year and who taught the young directors of “Kazakh New Wave”, which also marked its 30th anniversary this year; a selection of films by the legendary actor and filmmaker Shaken Aimanov, whose centenary is listed in the UNESCO calendar of memorable events; a series of Korean films sponsored by the Korean Film Council (KOFIC); “Film-Bridge East-West”; and a selection of winners from the debut festival Shaken’s Stars, also held in Almaty. Although this represents a fine list of programs for a festival that offers effectively only three days of screenings, the Central Asian Panorama, traditionally showcasing the films from Central Asia and its Turkic-language neighbours, was a much-missed component of this year’s jubilee edition, which also went ahead without the festival’s founder and art director, Gulnara Abikeyeva. This was the fifth time that a FIPRESCI jury was part of the festival, where we traditionally watch the Central Asian Panorama; this year, our selection consisted of a rather mixed bag of films: the six titles of the “Dynamic Kazakh Cinema” sidebar (from commercial films to auteur cinema) and five titles of the main competition from Iran, Iraq/Germany, Georgia/Estonia, Russia and Kazakhstan/France. Our jury awarded the film by Nariman Turebayev, The Adventure (Priklyuchenie, Kazakhstan/France, 2014). (Birgit Beumers)

Eurasia International Film Festival: www.eurasiaiff.kz/en