Joqtau
by
MOVIE CATEGORY
The young scientist Darkhan returns home to Kazakhstan with his girlfriend after seven years away. Darkhan’s grandfather, Sagat, invites them both to visit the places where his family was born, letting them meditate on the past, on tradition, on the present, on life and death.
“Joqtau” is the oldest genre of poetry of the nomadic tribes of Kazakhstan. It can be a memorial song or a meditation on grief. The boundless Kazakh steppes act in fact as a silent embrace for a requiem film which is at the same time a reportage, a corollary of ethnographic cinema, a road movie and an intimate drama. Without ever making this formal hybrid difficult, Aruan Anartay transmits the balanced and sensitive philosophy of the local communities, far from the frenetic times of metropolitan place that are never seen in the film but, we understand, oppress Darkhan, his girlfriend Elena and the natural times of all things.
DIRECTORY
Expert in fictional language and documentary language as well, Aruan Anartay is a director, screenwriter and producer, lives in Kazakhstan, and his first feature-length film, Joqtau, was screened for the first time by 2024 Locarno Film Festival in Cineasti del Presente section. His previous works, like A Train of Health (2020) or Warm Lake (2021), tell the central Asia steppes from a new, never-seen-before perspective, in a continuous and yet very natural mix of expressive modes.
