Native Dancer

Colour, 35 mm
Kazakhstan, Russia, France, Germany, 2008, 87 min
Section: East of the West - Films in Competition

Synopsis

The traditional house by the road and its large courtyard are always full of visitors. This is the home of Aidai, an old woman endowed with magic powers. She knows more about life than ordinary mortals, and lives in harmony with the spirit of nature. She is able to cure the body and soul, to reconcile disordered relationships, she understands people’s motives and desires, and can promote goodness in the face of evil. Her greatest happiness is her grandson who was taken into her care when her son was going through a difficult time. The latter is involved in the plans of the mafia businessman Batyr to build a gas station and motel on the pilgrimage site. After the grandson is abducted, Aidai also disappears, the only person who can break the curse of this desecrated place and its corrupt relationships… In addition to the film’s intriguing depiction of shamanism and its appealing branching story, the director offers an effective yet delicate social and psychological confrontation between traditional Kazakh values and vulgar entrepreneurial civilisation.

About the director

Guka Omarova (b. 1968, Alma-Ata) studied journalism at the Kazakh State University, she worked as an assistant director in television and then graduated from the Institute of Cinema and Theatre in Almaty (1998). She made the short documentary films That Heart of Mine (Moyo serdtse, 1998), Body Landscapes. Clay Project (Landshaft tyela. Glinyany proyekt, 2001) with Renat Kusayev, and Captain Kat (Kapitan Kat, 2003). Her debut film Schizo (Shiza, 2004) brought her ten festival awards, according to The New York Times one of the twenty best films of 2005. She worked closely with Sergey Bodrov on the epic film Mongol (2007). Although she has been living in the Netherlands since 2001, she made her next feature, Native Dancer, in Kazakhstan, inspired by the supernatural qualities of a woman she met there.