List of Kyrgyz Submissions For The Academy Award For Best Foreign Language Film - Submissions

Submissions

Every year, each country is invited by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to submit its best film for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Foreign Language Film Award Committee oversees the process and reviews all the submitted films. Following this, they vote via secret ballot to determine the five nominees for the award. Below is a list of the films that have been submitted by Kyrgyzstan for review by the Academy for the award since its conception.

All five films are stories about life in rural Kyrgyzstan, and all were co-produced with funding from French production companies.

The first two films- "Beshkempir, The Adopted Son" and "The Chimp"- were written & directed by Aktan Abdykalykov (now known as Aktan Arym Kubat), and star his teenage son Mirlan Abdykalykov. Both films are coming-of-age dramas about life in the rural north of the country. "Beshkempir" is the story of a 13-year old boy who finds out that he is adopted while "The Chimp" is a grimmer story about a 17-year old in Soviet-era Kyrgyzstan living in a poor, industrial town before being drafted into the Soviet army. "The Light Thief", a comedy about a man who "steals" electricity from the national grid to provide to his poor village, was also written and directed by Abdykalykov, and features the director in his first leading role.

"The Wedding Chest" and "Tengri" (aka Heavens Blue) were culture clash dramas. In Wedding Chest, a young Kyrgyz man returns home from his studies in France, with a beautiful French fiancée in tow. His fiancée is warmly welcomed by the village and captivated by the beauty of the region, but the man stubbornly refuses to tell his family that the two are engaged. In Tengri, a Kazakh man runs away with a married Kyrgyz woman whose abusive muhajadeen husband has just returned from Afghanistan.

"Beshkempir" was the first movie from independent Kyrgyzstan to win awards at major international film festivals including Locarno and Tokyo. "Beshkempir" also became the first Kyrgyz movie to be released on DVD in the United States in 2000, while "The Chimp" and "Tengri" got an English-subtitled DVD release in Hong Kong. "The Wedding Chest" was released on DVD in Russia with no English subtitles.