Credits: screenplay: Guka Omarova, Sergei Bodrov; director of photography: Rafeek Galev; editor: Darya Danilova; music: Sig; sound: Olivier Dandre; production design: Menlibaeva Almagul; costume design: Almagul Menlibaeva; producer: Sergei Bodrov, Sergey Selyanov, Sergey Azimov, Natacha Devillers; production: CTB Film Company, Studio Kazakhfilm, Les Petites Lumieres, Kinofabrika GmbH;

Country: Kazakhstan, Russia, France, Germany

Year: 2008

Running time: 87

Colour: Colour

Format: 35 mm

Even though the protagonist of her film is a female healer of the old school, Guka Omarova does not exoticize and sell out her fellow Kazakhs for the benefit of the box office. Instead, she addresses the clash of culture in contemporary Kazakhstan: that of the spiritualist's village community, where ethics are the traditional norm, and the new mercenary one, in which people step on their own kind to advance their material interests. These latter folks are not just renegades, they are in fact affiliated with organized crime. Building a casino or gas station on a parcel of land is, to them, more critical than the sacred character of the turf. Some suspenseful sub-plots are interwoven through the basic plotline, but the allure of the film is mostly in how the woman works her magic against the amoral crooks and capitalists. Nesipkul Omarbekova gives an astonishing central performance. (H. F.)