Adilkhan Yerzhanov - A Dark, Dark World
In this episode of HOBO, prolific Kazakh director Adilkhan Yerzhanov discusses with us his working method and the western influences on his cinema.
Only few directors in the world are capable to make three different films in one year. Unstoppable Kazakh director Adilkhan Yerzhanov is one of them. His faithful regular actors Daniar Alshinov (A Dark-Dark Man) and Assel Sadvakassova (Ulbolsyn) reunite for Herd Immunity, a black comedy in which money laundering, scamming deals and illegal vodka business go on in the shadows of Coronavirus.
In this episode of HOBO, prolific Kazakh director Adilkhan Yerzhanov discusses with us his working method and the western influences on his cinema.
Karatas village is a miniature allegorical copy of Kazakhstan and the world at large. It is in Karatas that most of Yerzhanov’s films take place. He came up with this “aul” back in his student days: it’s a kind of utopia, a place that does not exist. Like William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, which Yerzhanov is a fan of, Karatas it’s a place where it’s convenient to unfold the action. A village so stylized that it becomes the very essence of a place rather than its representation.
Filmmakers nowadays weigh in on how stories have changed and whether they prefer to address the pandemic into their work. Does cinema need to acknowledge the COVID-19 pandemic? Yerzhanov thinks that cinema is unable to directly deals with such subject, because, like any other form of art, it will always seek an escape from the physiology of the disease. Thanks to cinema, we’ll probably overcome our fears but - in the near future - there will hardly be films able to describe in an exhaustive way what has happened in the world during the last two years.
This interview was recorded in December 2021 during the 25th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF).
The fourth episode of HOBO is out now.