East of the West - Competition 2004 / Šizza / Kazakhstan, Russia, France, Germany 2004
Shizo, barely fifteen, annoys those around him with his aberrations and his inability to adapt, but in critical situations he is able to react like a man.
A Kazakh settlement at the beginning of the 1990s. A 15-year-old boy whom everyone calls Schizo lives with his mother and, on the whole, gets on well with her current partner. He works for a gang which organises fistfights and earns money betting. The prize is a battered Mercedes. One day Schizo brings one of his relatives to fight. To everyone’s surprise he wins, drives off in the Mercedes and soon sells it. All hell breaks loose: the mafia want either the car or their money back, and they go after his foster father to get it. Director Guka Omarova had help writing her feature debut from Sergei Bodrov, whose Prisoner of the Mountains won the Karlovy Vary Crystal Globe in 1996. Bodrov’s talent for authentically reproducing environment and character unquestionably helped the novice director, and allowed her to concentrate on the portrait of a boy whose originality may provoke a scornful jeer from those around him, but who in reality undertakes a meaningful passage from adolescent thoughtlessness to manly responsibility.
86 min / Color, 35 mm
Director Guka Omarova
/ Screenplay Guka Omarovová / Guka Omarova, Sergej Bodrov / Sergei Bodrov
/ Dir. of Photography Chasanbek Kydyralijev / Khasanbek Kydyraliyev
/ Music SIG
/ Editor Ivan Lebeděv / Ivan Lebedev
/ Producer Sergej Bodrov / Sergei Bodrov, Sergej Seljanov / Sergei Selyanov, Sergej Azimov / Sergei Azimov
/ Production Studio Kazakhfilm, CTB Film Company, Kinofabrika, Les Petites Lumiéres
/ Cast Olžas Nusupajev / Olzhas Nusuppaev, Eduard Tabyšev / Eduard Tabyshev, Gulnara Jeralijevová / Gulnara Jeralieva, Olga Landinová / Olga Landina
/ Contact Intercinema XXI Century
Guka Omarova (b. 1968, Almaty) studied in Moscow. She made her debut in 1998 with the short film My Heart and soon made another short, Landscape of a Man. The documentary Capitan Kat (2003) came next, followed by her feature debut, Schizo, made in French coproduction and included in the section Un certain regard at Cannes 2004.
Intercinema XXI Century
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Fax: +7 499 255 9053
E-mail: [email protected]
Raissa Fomina
Distributor
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