Tales from the Road | Exploring Kyrgyzstan & Uzbekistan

Chronicles of the cultural life of Tashkent (2007 – 2015). From the murder of Mark Weil to the wedding of Alisher Usmanov. Tashkent Biennale, apartment buildings, video art festival, conversations about nothing, amateur performances and operational shooting, advertising and much more. Tashkent, which no longer exists, just as these people are no longer in it.

In the Issyk-Kul region of Kyrgyzstan, tradition is king. Polo's still played with a freshly killed goat and the men still marry their women the old-fashioned way: by abducting them off the street and forcing them to be their wife. Bride kidnapping is a supposedly ancient custom that's made a major comeback since the fall of Communism and now accounts for nearly half of all marriages in some parts.

Life in a Kyrgyz aul (village) in the mountains connected to the rest of the world by a cable bridge, and the teenage boys who are constructing the rope of the bridge. A rope bridge which the locals call “The devil’s bridge” forms part of each and every event which takes place in a small village lost in the mountains of the Kyrgyz Republic. A platform driven by a huge winch which they have to pull with their own strength to cross the torrent is their only link with the outside world. But the director of the documentary wondered something else: “Does this bridge unite or does it actually separate?” Through the mist and over the thrashing waters, the inhabitants of the area glide along their ropes. A film, in the director’s own words, about ordinary people who live in an extraordinary place.

Having gone to Samarkand in search of traces of colonial culture, of which there were quite a few left there, having carefully photographed them, we suddenly discovered that it was not the dead buildings that were much more interesting, but the living carriers of this very colonial culture. The result is a film about people who live on the ruins of an empire.

Documentary feature about Kyrgyzstan, the home of the poet Tschingis Aitmatov and his characters, encounters with nomads, Kyrgyz traditions and the impressive scenery.

As „wings of men“ they became the faithful companion of a great nomadic nation thousands of years ago. Today, 28 years after the Soviet occupation, the little horse is an essential part of the cultural heritage and the search for identity of the modern Kyrgyz people. Based on its own story, a so called „good brown horse“ leads through the film and offers an insight of what it could mean to be „todays wings of men“. Told by a horse’s voice and through its eyes, this short film still is a documentary, but also a poetic journey to a nomadic culture.

We get to meet Aslanbek—a teenage shepherd in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. “Aslanbek” is a story exploring the dynamics of relationship between humans and animals, what we can learn from the mountains, and about dreams. In short, it's a story about our forgotten values.

At the non-places of this world lie the struggles of nobodies, to improve, overcome and survive. Their struggles suffocate them, they forget to live. They dislocate them, bring them together and pull them apart. Father and son share simple dreams and a lifetime on the road. Along an unromantic Silk Route they try to make some come true. Searching for a more livable future they break apart. As working class heroes they accept their fate. The film examines the added value of honesty in our actions.

LEICA - A CENTURY OF VISION shows how the invention of the 35mm format revolutionized documentary photography. Featuring legendary and contemporary photographers the film reveals the camera's enduring power to capture history as it unfolds.

A documentary film about the three remaining generations of fishermen in the Aral Sea-- Their everyday struggle to survive in one of the most dire and inhospitable places on the planet.

The tragic story of the greatest soccer player the most have never heard of.

An audiovisual letter that connects an imagined Kyrgyzstan with the filmmaker’s inner world, blending personal illness, memory, and political echoes into a poetic reflection on distance and belonging.

A biographical film about one of the greatest Medieval scientists and scholars, Al-Biruni.

Tashkent: The End of an Era reconstructs the complex history of Tashkent by means of archive footage which has never been shown before and the testimonies of its inhabitants.

The plot of the movie brings two people together - an immigrant filmmaker from Belarus and a 10 years old girl from the village in the south of Kyrgyzstan.

In the summer of 2011, mountaineer Kyle Dempster traveled the back roads of Kyrgyzstan on his bike. His goal: cross the country using old Soviet roads while climbing as many of the region's impressive peaks as possible. He was alone. He carried only a minimal ration of climbing gear. Ten Kyrgyz words complete its vocabulary. Part meditation on the true spirit of adventure and part epic travelogue, The Road from Karakol is the story of a unique spirit who cycled to the end of the road and decided to keep going.