The 79th Venice International Film Festival is showing the feature film Goliath by Kazakh filmmaker and screenwriter Adilkhan Yerzhanov as part of the Orizzonti Extra programme. The film is set in the fictional Karatas village that has been living under the control of a reckless local official. Throughout his film career, Yerzhanov has maintained a balance between art film and genre sensibilities, employing fictional plots and settings, and allegorically referring to the most sensitive problems of his native Kazakhstan. A young director of fiction and documentary films from Uzbekistan Mikhail Borodin (Produkty 24, Berlinale 2022), on the contrary, uses real stories to metaphorically portray the difficulties of life in Central Asia, such as the cruel exploitation of migrants, unpaid forced labor and the lack of social protection mechanisms. Together with film critic and curator Alexey Artamonov, the two directors and screenwriters will discuss possible cinematic tactics to understand and overcome such problems, as well as the limits of the possible social impacts of cinema.
Venue: Uzbekistan Pavilion
