A small-time con man, his two wives, and his recently returned son travel through the countryside of Kyrgyzstan, in Elizaveta Stishova’s unconventional family-road-trip drama.
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It works best when it’s giving us an unvarnished look at the uneasy coexistence of the mystical, superstitious past with the venal, grasping present, and the hardscrabble lives of the modern Kyrgyz underclass, as captured in Tudor Vladimir Panduru’s understatedly gritty camerawork. It is less successful tracking the rather soap-operatic interactions between the makeshift family.