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maryna-ajaja
Reviews
Pustoy dom (2012)
Ascel longs to escape her village in Kyrgyzstan and dreams of going to Moscow. The big city indeed tests her survival skills.
This well-paced production opens on Ascel, a girl on a country road in Kyrgyzstan, who sells apricots from a bucket with her brother. Self-determined, practical, and energetic, Ascel avoids the advances of one man, marries another, and runs off on her wedding night, vowing to make her way to the big city. "They're tough in Moscow, too," a relative warns Ascel; indeed, her first residence in the city is an underground shelter inside a factory, which she enters through a mythical hole in the wall. Ascel tries, with her small bag of tricks, to "make it," but soon finds that, for all her resourcefulness and adaptability, she's lacking in street smarts. Though she's no innocent, she's barely a mature individual and doesn't comprehend that dreams of success can come at a high price. Director Nurbek Egen, who was raised in Kyrgyzstan, weaves a surprising and touching micro-odyssey of a woman's first step into the intersection of village life and modernity. The film had its world premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival on 7th June 2012.