Feature film
Revenge
Mest
Yermek Shinarbayev · 1989
Synopsis
After a prologue in ancient Korea, where a king has his son raised as a warrior alongside a young poet, the narrative opens in 1915, in a Korean village: the schoolteacher Yan kills a little girl, his pupil, and flees to China. The child's father, Tsai, pursues him in vain, finds him in a silver mine without being able to strike, then fathers with a second wife a son, Soungou, whom he charges on his deathbed with avenging his sister. Grown to manhood, Soungou sets off on the murderer's trail, and doubts.
Context
The film, divided into seven parts after a prologue, was produced by Kazakhfilm, photographed by Sergei Kosmanev behind soft filters that led its style to be compared with Sokurov and Tarkovsky, and scored by Vladislav Shut; its final third follows Sungu to Sakhalin, where he builds a house. Awarded at Sochi and then shown at Cannes, it was restored in 2010 by Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation at the Cineteca di Bologna, from the negative held in the Kazakhstan state archives, then reissued on video in 2017.
Who it is for
One hour thirty-nine, in Russian with subtitles. It is better to know that in 1937 the Koreans of the Soviet Far East were forcibly deported to Central Asia, and that Kazakhstan is home to their descendants.
Prizes and reception
Grand Prize at Sochi in 1990, Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 1991; restored by Scorsese's foundation and taken up by the Criterion Collection in 2017.