Screenplay: Darezhan Omirbaev based upon Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.
Cinematographer: Boris Troshev
Editing: Erlan Utephergenov
Music: Bauyrzhan Kuanyshev
Cast.: Ermek Ahmetov, Erkebulan Almanov, Amangeldy Aytaly, Nurlan Bajtasov, Daniyar Bazarkulov
Production: Limara Zjeksembajeva
Distribution:
Les Acacias
63 rue de Ponthieu
75008 Paris
Tel: 0033-1.56.69.29.30
Mail: [email protected]
Year: 2012
DCP, Color, 90 min,
OV Kazakh, French subtitles
Un Certain regard - Cannes 2012
In a big city of Kazakhstan today, a young man studying philosophy lives precariously. He rents a basement room in the house of an aged person; he suffers from lack of money but above all from loneliness. He eats mostly bread he buys at the near-by grocery. One day, he decides to rob the grocery, not so much by necessity but rather to prove himself he belongs to the strong men of the world. But this inexperienced thief panics and kills the grocer and a client. The police cannot find the murderer who isolates himself deeper with loneliness, and now remorse. When his mother and sister come to see him, his malaise gets even more deep-seated.
The Student is inspired by Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. Is this silent student whose name we ignore and for whom we feel no empathy, a symbol of the Kazakh youth lost in a country where wild capitalism has only reinforced inequalities between the rich and the poor?
