Deal at the Border
By Kit Macdonald
It's not every day that you get the chance to see a Kyrgyz film on the big screen, let alone one of this quality, so here's one to seize with both hands at the ever-wonderful Sants co-operative Zumzeig. On the Kyrgyzstan-Kazakhstan border, a drug trafficker named Aza meets Nazik, a woman on the run from human traffickers. Against his better judgment, he helps her to escape, but nothing goes as planned. Summoning up his last threads of dignity, Aza is determined to do the right thing, with gripping results.
Director Dastan Zhapar Ryskeldi’s tense, quietly dramatic work was inspired by a real-life incident in which his brother was abducted by traffickers at the age of 16. Take this intensely felt storytelling and excellent script and add in the extraordinary scenery of the Kyrgyz-Kazakh border as a backdrop, and you've got something special indeed.