Gulnara Abikeyeva is President of the Kazakhstan Film Critics Association, member of the Asia Pacific Screen Awards Academy, FIPRESCI and NETPAC. In 2016, she was decorated with the French Order of Arts and Letters for her international activity and her work as artistic director of the Eurasia International Film Festival in Almaty. She was a Fulbright scholar in the United States (2001-2002) and has lectured at the universities of Pittsburgh, Harvard, Yale and Tafts. She was also a researcher in Japan (2018-2019) at Hokkaido University. She is the author of twelve books on cinema. Among them, Nation-Building in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian States, How This Process is Reflected in Cinematography, Cinema in Central Asia. Rewriting Cultural Histories, co-edited by Michael Rouland and Birgit Beumers, Mahkhmalbaf's Film House. She is now a professor at Turan University in Almaty. She is the president of the Critique jury.
