Discoveries from Tajikistan World Cinema

In the midst of a mid-life crisis Jan, a 40 year old dancing teacher, decides to instigate a revolution against himself. His first act is to summon each of his four lovers, who are unaware of each other, to join him at the dance studio where we assume he is a tutor. His revelations to the women prompt a discourse about love and the fleeting nature of happiness. But when he comes to the fourth and final woman, he finds that his own philosophy of love is not as easy to apply as he had presumed. He realizes that the more the contemporary world has become sexually oriented the farther it has moved away from love...

Twenty-year-old Kamal has been married for a few months but his wife is still a virgin. Learning that there is nothing physically wrong with him after visiting a doctor, Kamal sets off to town to search for another woman. The city is full of them but Kamal is still unable to meet anyone, until a chance encounter on a bus. But it looks as if this accidental meeting will take Kamal much farther than he was prepared to go… By the director of ‘Angel on the Right’. —Celluloid Dreams

Three young Russian friends amuse themselves in a small seaside town with a series of minor adventures, some of which involve a new suit.

The unborn child of Mamlakat is telling her story. She is 17, beautiful and vivacious, and dreaming secretly of becoming an actress. She lives with her father and brother in a small village in Central Asia. One night she is seduced by an actor from a travelling troupe, who poses as a friend of Tom Cruise, and gets her pregnant. She tries to abort, but her father and brother become determined to find the seducer, setting in motion a cascade of comic adventures.

Anora, a Tajik teenage girl, experiences the coming of age. Due to the ambiguity related to her absent father, the closed borders caused by the pandemic, and the fear of uncertainty, Anora has to grow up in the course of a night.

Sailor Marat carries a great burden. His whole village condemns him since his wife and many fishermen were washed off his boat in a mysterious sea storm. Ever since then the sea has vanished. One day, Marat returns to his village, obsessed by the idea of making the sea return and so the dead. He begins rebuilding his shipwreck in the middle of the desert, dragging it towards the endless horizon. Only his last close friend Balthasar, and Tamara, the sister of Marat's deceased wife, believe in him. Tamara, deeply in love with Marat, who repulses her, knows from a fortune teller that maybe not her dream but his might come true. One morning Marat wakes up by the sound of water - the sea has returned, ready to take what belongs to her...

Nilufar, a girl living downtown, is about to marry a man living uptown. But one day, soldiers come and plant barbed wire to separate the two towns. The life of the people, who have thus far enjoyed peace, now falls into severe chaos. Students must take classes with barbed wire in the middle of the classroom, and it becomes difficult to go to the hospital. However, the biggest problem is Nilufar's wedding. Kirill, the chief of the climate observatory, tries his best to help her wedding, but then a terrible tragedy occurs.

A director is remaking a classic Iranian film in Tajikistan. The studio armorer is worried that the gun they intend to use is not a prop gun, and fears the consequences. A young woman arrives at the location insisting that she be given an audition. At the same time, In another part of town, Sara, recently recovered from a car crash, suddenly realises that her accident was all part of a conspiracy. These people’s destinies inevitably intertwine.

This is a myth about a wandering tribe striving to exist according to the laws of nature and merge with it. In its flight from the conventions of civilization, it despises the blood and spiritual ties between people. Any manifestation of personality — a protest against this rigid system — is immediately suppressed...

The events of the film take place in the Tajik outback. The story which presented is the story of two-three families. The large-scale drama of ideas in the film becomes the drama of several people living in a remote village, and the conflict, which may seem civilizational to someone, ends completely at home and so that everyone has time in the future.

Melody teaches music at a centre for cancerous children. The thirty children are having a party at the end of autumn and ask Melody to compose a piece using the sounds of thirty different birds. She goes to her home village to record the birdsong and is helped by the mute caretaker of the family home, Mango. When they find just 20 birds, Mango makes Melody understand that only the old village singer knows where the other birds are, but bird hunters have forced him out of the village. Melody sets out to find both - him and the missing birds.

The war is over. Sohib Zamanov returns to his native village. A loving wife and parents are waiting for him here. However, there was no joyful meeting. The long tongues of the neighbors glorified Hubon. So the pure love and loyalty of the beautiful Hubon was trampled on...

A simple fable about a teacher's quest for justice. The teacher's neighbor not only ogles his wife, but builds an outdoor toilet right beside the teacher's house. When he is refused any legal recourse, the teacher decides to get revenge by building a latrine for the entire village outside his neighbor's house.

The action takes place in Tajikistan in the late 80s. Police Major Batur goes to prison on false charges. In the zone, a certain Khalil promises to help Batur get even with the mafia that framed him. However, it turns out that Khalil himself is part of this gang. Batur can only run and act on his own...

Is a city like a ruthless jungle where happy middle class man can get killed without any good reasons? Or is it more like a merciful nest where a patient with terminal condition can get transplantation to be given a new life? Romish has only a few months left due to his cardiomyopathy. This orphaned guy hopelessly struggles everyday with evasion and anger hanging out with gangs. At last he happens to kill Shahzod who enjoyed moment of his life about to remarry with a devoted woman. By an irony of fate, Shahzod’s heart is transplanted to Romish. Shahzod’s father tries to embrace Romish as a new son, but the revealing truth gets everybody into jeopardy.

Mira returns home to Dushanbe from Russia to visit her father, a wastrel who is completely addicted to a game called "odds and evens," or Kosh ba Kosh. When another player comes to collect on gambling debts and finds nothing of value, he sets his sights on Mira.

Recording a 24-hour period throughout every country in the world, we explore a greater diversity of perspectives than ever seen before on screen. We follow characters and events that evolve throughout the day, interspersed with expansive global montages that explore the progression of life from birth, to death, to birth again. In the end, despite unprecedented challenges and tragedies throughout the world, we are reminded that every day we are alive there is hope and a choice to see a better future together. Founded in 2008, it set out to explore our planet's identity and challenges in an attempt to answer the question: Who are we?

Retired border guard Sergei Markov, searching for his missing daughter, returns to the border where he served in his youth. To get his daughter back, he must unravel a tangled web of questions and confront the ghosts of the past: crime, revenge, and his own mistakes, which can only be corrected by returning to the beginning—the mountains.

Sixteen–year-old Bach is inspired - Parvina, the girl of his dreams, unexpectedly allows him to escort her home. Along the way, she shares the good news: her family is going to Antalya. For Baha, whose reality is a father in prison and a mother in need, this is an impossible dream. Unable to tell the truth, he plunges into a fantasy world where the sea is his salvation, a symbol of the life he only dreams of.

Dushanbe, Tajikistan, former USSR. In this city where old houses are destroyed and their occupants are evicted all around, Rimma and her granddaughter Katia are waiting for the scheduled demolition of their old house in order to be rehoused in one of the buildings that are springing up everywhere in the city. The preparations for the move disrupt their daily life. French-Tajik filmmaker Gulya Mirzoeva follows their intimacy and their journey towards a new life.

This social drama takes place in the fisherfolk village on a bank of the Tajik sea. The villagers start facing the ecological disaster recently. The village is in transition between traditionality and modernity. Barakat, the honest and respected old village man, doesn’t support the Boat Shopkeeper who smuggles in the harmful goods. He has only one confidant, Ramses, a small village boy with a made-up name. The filmmakers on a visit to shoot a film in the village cast Safar, Ramses’s father, as a lead. While Salima, Ramses’s mother, struggles to convince Safar and her son to relocate to a city. The finale of the story unveils the protagonists' fate amidst all ups and downs.

Early documentary by Orzu Sharipov.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Tajikistan, a former Soviet Socialist Republic, plunged into a devastating civil war. A famine struck the mountainous region of the Pamir where Raïmberdi, a passionate and ingenious botanist, built his own hydroelectric station to help his family survive through the crisis.

An unrepentant prodigal son straight out of a Russian jail returns to his hometown, Asht, to help his mother die with dignity. But his debts in his hometown are many and long overdue, the townspeople are tough as nails, and he soon gets more than he expected from the quiet village. In this dark comedy, his third feature, writer-director Jamshed Usmonov cast the population of Asht as its own persuasive self and his own mother and brother as the fractured yet formidable domestic couple.

Tajikistan on the eve of the declaration of its Independence. Komsomol, KGB, bread deficiency, inflation. Kahhor and Mannon, the two old friends, are tested when one of them gets the lucky lottery ticket as his salary.

The film tells about human loneliness. At times, overcoming obstacles and destructing something, we build a comfortable world for ourselves. Later, after some time we realize that we are alone in the world that we have built. But there is no way back, and losing a beloved person, we lose the whole world. “Never receive such telegrams!”

An unknown woman who happens to be an Alter Ego of the film director starts a journey in Tajikistan countryside. The film she makes on the way touches upon the topics of existence, image, and traditional culture.

Three boys wander around a large town in Afghanistan, looking for empty bottles and cans to recycle to get them some money for food. During their walk they talk about what's on their minds. Every now and then, the director asks his protagonists for some explanations, such as why they share a loaf of bread they just got with a boy they don't know. One of them answers very matter-of-factly: "As God gives to us, we must give to his people."

Daler, a ten-year-old boarding school student, sets out on a journey with Samad, a gambler, to find his mother, Khursheda. Along the way, they face various challenges that help Daler mature and understand the importance of choice. Upon meeting his mother, the boy must make a fateful decision that could change his life forever.

The plot of the play "Modern Bride" essentially revolves around the lives of Rustam and Max. These two students possess completely opposing characteristics - Rustam is calm and composed, whereas Max is lively and restless. Both of them study in the faculty of construction. Apart from studying at university, Rustam also works at a car repair shop. Following some strange events, he meets a city girl named Sabina, who always speaks in Russian and does not know the Tajik language. Sabina, having grown up in the city and not knowing the Tajik language, endures the difficult and challenging life of Rustam's village and its harsh realities due to her immense love, ultimately achieving success.

More than 50 years back in a stony set of a remote mountainous village somewhere in Tajikistan the lovers called Shams and Mekhri traveled. Mekhri pulled by a transient eclipse broke an oath of marital faithfulness that overnight transformed Sham's existence into a farcical puppet show, leading to a murder of his spouse.

A Pamiri girl from Tajikistan travels to Moscow in search of a better life and falls in love with a Russian boy, much to the disapproval to both families.

A former migrant worker, at the age of thirty-six Rano becomes an ambitious theater director in a small Tajik town. Despite all the difficulties, Rano has to put in a lot of effort to breathe life into the provincial theater again.

The film is based on the novel by Abror Zahir and tells the story of a hunter named Sayyod, who hunts and finds happiness. Instead of prey, the hunter finds a girl in the water. After some treatment, the girl regained consciousness and married him. The girl lived on the other side of the river, in Afghanistan, and connects her fate with the Tajik hunter Sayyod.

The hero grew up in an orphanage, entered a music college and became a music teacher. His daughter and grandchildren also became musicians. And he started learning to play the piano at the age of 63.

Economic depression and political chaos force Tajik men to become migrant labourers, working in unsafe conditions and with inconsistent pay. Tajik women attempt to keep their families alive, and, in some cases, enter polygamous marriages to feed themselves and their families. Often, these women relate to Penelope, the wife of the mythical hero Odysseus, who waits many years for her husband to return.

This film deals with the Jewish community of Bukhara, during the period of major migrations to Israel and the United States.

A poetic phantasmagoria about the meaning of human existence.

The family decides to dig a well in the courtyard of their house. After several days of work, it turns out that there is a huge stone lying at a depth of several meters... The director was a volunteer at the VKSR.

A successful and truthful journalist, after publishing his next article, finds himself under pressure and facing threats. At the suggestion of his friend and colleague, they go to the village for a week to calm their nerves and relax. The same night they leave for the village, the young bride commits suicide. Village residents begin to hide this story from law enforcement agencies. A friend of the young bride comes to the journalist, who tells him that she did not commit suicide, but was killed, and asks for help in finding the killer.

Bibi Seshanbe Ona – literally ‘The Lady of Tuesday’ – is a widespread blessing ritual in Central Asia. It incorporates elements of animalism, Zoroastrianism and an ancient story comparable to Cinderella. It is performed in a small circle of women and includes cooking special traditional foods, lighting candles and fortune-telling using flour. It is still performed in Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan.

The hot air balloon that Frenchman Jean is in is blown away by the wind to a distant mountain village. In the village, shepherd Safar is the identical image of Jean. Safar dreams of becoming a hairdresser and hones his barber skills on the villagers and shares his innermost thoughts with his dog Rambo. When the Frenchman appears, there is a commotion in the village. Even Safar`s own mother takes Jean for her son. Even when he speaks in a language that she doesn`t understand. The villagers explain this case by the fact that the guy was struck by lightning.

Globalisation, politics, and religion are ruthlessly stamping out the last remnants of traditional culture in Tajikistan. Today, many of these ancient traditions survive only in the mountains, where music and dancing still accompany people in joy and sorrow, just as they did a thousand years ago. After hearing a recording of a Tajik instrument called the maddoh many years ago, British musician Leo Abrahams was struck by its unusual beauty, and travelled to Tajikistan in an attempt to hear the music in person. In Rhythms of Lost Time, Leo travels the country and meets local residents, who introduce him to the hospitable and rich culture of Tajikistan. Together, they draw back the curtain on the challenges that traditional culture and the Tajik people have faced both in the past, and in the present day.

After long years of waiting, to the house of a forester, comes joy - his wife is expecting a baby. But the happy expectation is violated by the visit of a fortune teller, referring to the stars, puts him in front of a moral choice: - tribal unity or a successful life for his son.

From the shadows of the majestic Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan comes a story of Azam, a shepherd and Buzkashi champion, who faces the pressures of modernization in the sport and in his own personal life. Azam plays as an individual for honor and integrity, but his success is increasingly thwarted by organized alliances, or "mafias", encouraged by his rival Khurshed, a member of Tajikistan's nouveau riche. Khurshed believes that team play is the future of the sport. Between challenges on the field and within his own family, Azam tries to find a place for himself in the new Tajikistan. Written by Najeeb Mirza

Stains of Oxus evokes an oneiric journey through the greatest Central Asian river, Amu Dariya – known in Greek times as Oxus, portraying the transformation of landscape and witnessing people that inhabit its riverbanks, beginning from the high plateau of Tajikistan to the lowland desserts in Uzbekistan where the river finds its end. Uzbekistan where the river finds its longest journey is one of the two land locked countries in the world, making water a sacred element of nature. Stains of Oxus attempts to bring back a memory of how water has been worshiped and taken care in the tradition. This abstract topographic journey awakes the question of Central Asian ecosystem and landscape, traditions of caring about water and brings up the problem of water mismanagement in the region in a poetic way.

With many families in Tajikistan increasingly turning to migration as an answer to their financial hardship, “Behind the Wheel” serves as an inquiry into the challenges this phenomenon can present for those who stay behind. It explores the moral and emotional turmoil of Nigora, an Uzbek woman whose traditional life of being a housewife is turned upside down after her migrant husband fails to send back enough money and she finds out he has been having an affair. No longer able to rely on her husband, Nigora defies prevailing gender norms and sets to work fixing car tyres.

Davlat is a Tajik merchandiser and a humble father of three children. A well respected businessman in the Pamir area, a mountainous region southeast of Tajikistan in the borders with China. His life has been transformed since the opening of the Tajik-Chinese border and the reconstruction of the old Silk Road: A road full of surprises and new experiences for Davlat and his family.

Umarali Sattorov is a noble man who was born and lives in Konibodom city. Duringthe time of the Soviet Union he lived a life according to the human values of love and loyalty.And now he wants to establish himself in the new era of today’s economics. But…

A little but wise boy lives in a poor mountain village with his goat. When his father leaves for Moscow to earn money, the child is left alone, forced to face life's hardships by himself.

Focuses on the struggle of the Cambodian people to regain and rebuild their nation through education and industrialisation. Features harrowing images of death and starvation, and footage of victims recounting their experience of life under Pol Pot's regime. Scenes of towering temples and traditional dancing are contrasted to the training of enemy soldiers, armed with US weapons, and scenes of warfare. At a celebration to mark the 60th Anniversary of the Soviet Union, the Cambodian leader voices his gratitude to the Communist Party and the Soviet people, who are shown teaching technological and construction skills to their Cambodian comrades. Includes foreign newsreel footage.

Izdeu is a Kazakh word for ‘search.’ The film is an exploration of convoluted trajectories of seven generations of the protagonists’ foremothers, starting from the oldest, “seventh grandmother,” a nomadic woman from the banks of Syr Darya river. Flipping through several key pages of the colonial and post-colonial history of the region, it touches on the themes of oppression, trauma and resilience of indigenous peoples of Syr Darya in the face of historical cataclysms. As the camera follows the preparations for a traditional family reunion dinner, the narrative focuses on the complex interplay between personal and collective history.

Observation of people, their faces, daily activities, sights and sounds of the open market, in the city square, aboard the cable railway and in a car.

The story of three women who live in a small town in the south of Tajikistan and every day go to the handyman market, where they offer their services: for only $ 3, they are ready to take on any hard, even male, work, just to return to their children in the evening not empty-handed...