Serik Aprimov

Yerken is nine years old and lives alone in a remote village in the mountains. When his older brother returns after a long absence, the young boy’s heart leaps with joy. But it doesn’t last long, his older brother has become a cold and heartless person… Serik Aprymov was born in 1960 in Kazakhstan and studied film at the Moscow Film School (VGIK). Along with other young directors from his country, he became part of the “new wave” of Kazakh cinema. At the Locarno Film Festival in 2004, he presented Okhotnik (The Hunter), in which a young boy suffers the contrast between the traditions of his people now on the decline and the progress of an increasingly urbanized new society.

Yerken is nine years old and lives alone in a remote village in the mountains. When his older brother returns after a long absence, the young boy’s heart leaps with joy. But it doesn’t last long, his older brother has become a cold and heartless person… Serik Aprymov was born in 1960 in Kazakhstan and studied film at the Moscow Film School (VGIK). Along with other young directors from his country, he became part of the “new wave” of Kazakh cinema. At the Locarno Film Festival in 2004, he presented Okhotnik (The Hunter), in which a young boy suffers the contrast between the traditions of his people now on the decline and the progress of an increasingly urbanized new society.

In an isolated village in the Kazakhstan mountains, Erken, a boy of 12, lives with his mother, a beautiful and alluring single woman. One night, when the mother is visited by a hunter, Erken steals the latters horse and his gun to hold up a shop. Sought by the police, he is found by the hunter who gives him a choice: to go to prison or to go and live with him in the mountains. Thus begins a voyage of initiation, in the course of which the hunter tries to pass on his taste for and understanding of life.

A filmmaker, Kobessov, awakens from an anxiety nightmare: during the preview of his newest film, the projectionist mixes up the reels and begins to show a bad karate film by accident. Although Kobessov objects to the mix-up, the public is ecstatic and refuses to allow the projectionist to interrupt the screening to show Kobessov's film.

"Three brothers live in a small village somewhere in Kazakhstan. Nearby is the small station, where an elderly man, who has had the nickname Klein since he was in a concentration camp in the Second World War, rules the roost. ... The children ask inquisitively about the nature of his activities, as nothing seems to happen. He tells them that he supplies a local military base with material. Klein starts telling them different stories, for instance about the beautiful lake where the officers spend their spare time and where life is as beautiful as the women. The picture he sketches of this lake is so attractive to the three brothers and their friends that they resolve to go there. They know from the old man that it will cost money, because life is dear. Tri brata is not a children's film, but a fairy-tale about today's world with its military aircraft on one side and an elderly man with his railway material on the other." - IFFR

A Kazakh villager has to take care of his pregnant sister-in-law after his brother is thrown in jail.

A Kazakh villager has to take care of his pregnant sister-in-law after his brother is thrown in jail.

A young man comes home to his Kazakh village after finishing up his stint in the Soviet Army. All that he finds are his old friends drinking, senselessly carousing, tumbling into one violent brawl after another.

The story of Jerken, a young stage director, obsessed with his love for and his life with the theater. Something terrible has happened, a girl has been murdered. In Jerken's diary, he deals with four themes: theater, dreams, the woman he loved, and a friend. An investigator shows up and takes the diary with him. He tries to reveal the reasons for this tragedy. The main theme of the film is the quest for inner harmony, for a balance between the human soul and objective reality.

A young filmmaker gets an assignment to shoot a film and finds himself in an unfamiliar environment - an aul (kazakh village). A young man from the city is immersed in a completely different world. The life of the small village is full of intrigues, conflicts and dramas, to which the protagonist becomes a participant. Step by step he begins to understand and accept everything that is happening. The film ends with a celebration - the circumcision of a small child. This ancient Kazakh ritual brings people together again. Grievances and arguments are forgotten. The joy of being returns to people's souls. The film is a statement that if money is evil, and it is ineradicable, then kindness lives in any person soul , and it is also ineradicable.

This is the story of a six-year-old boy who lived in a formerly prosperous mining village, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the mine was closed and his father and mother were left without work. His father earns by selling bricks of abandoned houses. The boy lives in his fictional world. He dreams about school, but he has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This diagnosis is made by a local doctor at the beginning of the film. This is the beginning of his drama.

This is the story of a six-year-old boy who lived in a formerly prosperous mining village, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the mine was closed and his father and mother were left without work. His father earns by selling bricks of abandoned houses. The boy lives in his fictional world. He dreams about school, but he has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This diagnosis is made by a local doctor at the beginning of the film. This is the beginning of his drama.

This is the story of a six-year-old boy who lived in a formerly prosperous mining village, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the mine was closed and his father and mother were left without work. His father earns by selling bricks of abandoned houses. The boy lives in his fictional world. He dreams about school, but he has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This diagnosis is made by a local doctor at the beginning of the film. This is the beginning of his drama.

This is the story of a six-year-old boy who lived in a formerly prosperous mining village, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the mine was closed and his father and mother were left without work. His father earns by selling bricks of abandoned houses. The boy lives in his fictional world. He dreams about school, but he has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This diagnosis is made by a local doctor at the beginning of the film. This is the beginning of his drama.