In a rage, a teacher murders a boy. Another boy is bred, for one sole purpose: to avenge his brother’s death. Kazakh master Ermek Shinarbaev’s close collaboration with the Korean-Russian writer Anatoli Kim yielded three great films, the most remarkable of which is this beautiful, profoundly unsettling film. A true odyssey, geographically and psychologically. One of the greatest films to emerge from the Kazakh New Wave, and one of the toughest. —World Cinema Foundation
Like so many of his contemporaries, Shinarkbaev graduated from VGIK with a degree in film directing. A progenitor of the “New Kazakh Wave”, his films marked an aesthetic and intellectual “opening up” of late Soviet culture, depicting bohemian restlessness in the internationally renowned Azghyin ushtykzyn azaby, and exercising an unconventional narrative style, particularly in the expansively thematic Mest. —Seagull Films
