Kairat

Darezhan Omirbaev, who’s made four features to date in Kazakhstan, is one of the most talented filmmakers currently working anywhere, but his nationality seems to have doomed him to the margins. He made his feature debut with this remarkable 1991 black-and-white film about a dreamy-eyed youth from the steppes arriving in the city by train, staying at a youth hostel, riding on buses, and obsessing over movies and girls. Less a story than a series of seemingly disconnected yet overlapping sketches, it suggests Bresson in both its performances and its remarkable attention to sound, but its manner of interfacing realism with dreams is wholly original. In Kazakh with subtitles; a 35-millimeter print will be shown. 72 min. Gene Siskel Film Center.

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