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In Conversation
Assaulting the Strongman: The Cinema of Adilkhan Yerzhanov

Featured speakers: Adilkhan YERZHANOV, Olga KHLASHEVA

Forum Details

Forum Description

Following the crime-filled, devious satires of his previous films, Kazakh filmmaker Adilkhan Yerzhanov returns this year with two new thrillers: Assault and Goliath. Presented at Rotterdam and Venice earlier this year, gun-toting, star-crossed heroes and villains continue to bring to the fore masculine authoritarianism with Yerzhanov’s special brand of deadpan humour. Between long, awkward silences and rapid gunfire, his anticlimatic depictions of maleness, funny as they are devastating, have long hinted at deconstructions of politics and power in Central Asia.

In this conversation with Yerzhanov, we discuss his filmic assault upon the political ‘strongman’. Are power structures fated to be intertwined with the masculine? How does this trickle into filmmaking? And what stories remain to be told from Central Asia pertaining to power relations?

SPEAKERS

With over a dozen films under his belt, Adilkhan Yerzhanov is a major figure in Kazakh cinema. Following his breakout feature The Owners (2014), which competed in SGIFF, he went on to make acclaimed films like The Plague at the Karatas Village (2016), The Gentle Indifference of the World (2018) and A Dark, Dark Man (2019). Assault, the opening film for this year’s SGIFF, and Goliath both premiered at Rotterdam and Venice respectively.

Olga Khlasheva has been producing and distributing Kazakh cinema since the 1990s. She is noted for her decade-long collaboration with writer-director Adilkhan Yerzhanov. The duo’s films, beginning with Realtors in 2011, and most recently Assault and Goliath, have consistently presented the benchmark of Kazakh productions. She has served as a juror in many international film festivals including Warsaw and Tallinn Black Nights, and is presently head of international relations at Kazakhfilm Studios.

 

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