Feature film
The Last Stop
Konechnaya ostanovka
Serik Aprimov · 1990
Synopsis
Back from military service, the young Erken returns to his village of Aksuat as it is: alcohol, fights, poverty and days that all look alike. His girlfriend has married someone else, his friends pass the time between brawls and idleness; a wedding ends in a fistfight, a drunk man fires on the police from a roof. The film moves through scenes with no apparent connection, in a realism that borders on the surreal, until the moment Erken decides to leave for good.
Context
The film was shot in Aksuat, the director's native village, which is also its subject, with his friends, neighbours and relatives as performers; the cinematography is by Murat Nugmanov, and Sabit Kurmanbekov plays the lead. Produced by Kazakhfilm and spoken in Kazakh, the film provoked strong protests from the local Communist Party and had not yet been released in the Soviet Union when the Sundance festival showed it, in 1990, in a section devoted to the new wave of Kazakhstan; the goEast festival in Wiesbaden has since shown it again under the title Terminus. The Last Stop.
Who it is for
One hour seventeen minutes, in Kazakh with subtitles. Better to know that Soviet military service tore young rural men from their villages for two years and returned them to a changed world.
Prizes and reception
Shown at Sundance as early as 1990; the film through which its author entered cinema, and one of those that made the Kazakh wave known outside the Soviet Union.
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