Best Kazakhstani documentary movies

Ninety One (2017)

A drama about formation of famous Kazakhstan boy band 'Ninety One'.

In The Workshop (2025)

After the death of his friend, the master creates an instrument that allows him to establish a connection with him.

Rem (1993)

A 1993 Russian language documentary directed by Vladimir Tyulkin, starring Rasha Adan.

My Love (2018)

Тrue Kazakh girls don’t marry Russians. This is what grandma Zeinegul believes in. But her beloved granddaughter disobeyed her will. Many years later the girl comes back to Kazakhstan. Her mother drinks, her grandma prays, her father got married again, but she wants to take a picture of her whole family, just like the one they took years ago when she was a child. The picture of the family she loves and hates so much.

Salt (2022)

The popularity of a cheap synthetic drug, mephedrone, is growing at an alarming rate in the country. The authors of the film will shed light on new forms of drug trafficking, collect a portrait of the consumer and demonstrate how his image is romanticized in modern media among young people.

We Live Here (2025)

The film takes place in the desolate Kazakh steppe, on the grounds of a former nuclear testing site, where two ecologists conduct research to identify radioactive areas unfit for habitation. Nearby, an eyewitness to the nuclear tests writes down his personal memories, while his son struggles to save his sick daughter. Through the intimate story of three generations of one family, the film reflects on humanity's collective history and the dire situation facing our future. The steppe serves as a metaphor for our planet, now perilously close to becoming a vast nuclear wasteland.

Paradise (1995)

Sergey Dvortsevoy makes his international debut with this astonishingly intimate portrait of a nomadic family on the Kazakh plains. Several scenes in this slow, elegant film betray a certain dry humor -- a child devouring the last of a bowl of yogurt and then crying; a cow getting its head stuck in a pail; and a woman singing to herself, accompanied by her snoring husband. Other scenes capture the nomads' hardscrabble lives -- drunken herdsmen in the grips of existential despair, growling dogs, and a camel enduring a rather grim septum piercing. By the end of the film, the family pulls up stakes and herds its sundry four-legged beasts -- camels, cattle, goats, dogs, and horses -- to a more fertile plain. This film was screened at the 1999 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival.

Not About Dogs (2010)

This documentary is dedicated to Nina Perebeyeva, a woman who operates the only private dog shelter in Kazakhstan under deplorable conditions. Her compassion is a sharp contrast to the day-to-day activities of Vova, a vicious dog catcher and a drunkard who lives in the same town.

Reverence (2013)

This educational film is intended for students of film schools. It illustrates the concept of directors copying each other.

Highway (1999)

The highway of the title is a 2,000 mile dirt road in Kazakhstan. Along this route, a traveling family circus journeys in their crowded hand-cranked bus, stopping in villages. The filmmaker accompanies the Tadjibajevs, capturing their quarrels, performances, and intimate moments.

Herdsmen (2001)

A small film crew tracks a Kazak family in Xinjiang, China's western-most province, from spring to winter. Unlike the people of Kazakstan, who grew into a nation of farmers and workers, the Kazaks retained their nomadic life and a close bond with nature. The crew follows a typical nomadic family with 11 children as the family travel wherever there is grass for their animals. They endure incredible hardships, sometimes going several days without food. In spite of this they have moments of joy and beauty, believing that nature will support them and that they will survive. The filmmakers' four-year-long effort shooting the film is part of a recent rise in Chinese filmmakers' documenting their country's ethnic diversity. Although it takes a classic ethnographic, observational approach, the film is stunning in its cinematic, epic style. Richly informative for teaching anthropology, Asian Studies, nomadic cultures and kinship. Filmmaker: Wei Bin

Playing Brahms (1998)

Master Class (1998)

Eisenstein in Alma-Ata (1999)

This video chronicles a crucial period in the life of the great Soviet filmmaker, Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948), when he left Moscow during WWII for the Kazakhstan capital to film Ivan the Terrible (1943). Suffering under a heavy work schedule, fighting artistic interference from the Ministry of Cinema, constantly fearful of arrest by Stalin's secret police, crushed by feelings of loneliness and forebodings of death, Eisenstein suffered his first heart attack. The video visits sites where he lived and worked, features intimate excerpts from Eisenstein's diary, rare production footage, the director's sketches and screen tests, and interviews with friends, coworkers, and Soviet journalists and film critics, including Naum Kleiman, curator of the Eisenstein Museum.

Sacrifice (1992)

KazGU-60 Years (1992)

Profession — Controller (1993)

Kazakh Pre-Muslim Ceremonies and Religious Faiths (1993)

The mythic parables and traditions connection with death as The Return to the Womb of Sky. The symbolism of the actions of the funerary rituals are described. Mr. Kayirbekov has also done films about the rituals of childbirth, marriage, the symbolic parts of the yurt, and the Kazakh cosmological concept.

Zhumat Shanin (1993)

I am a Eurasian (1993)

Come On, Scumbags (2013)

Confident in her style and way of being, a young trans girl Zhenya moves through the world figuring out life and love. A story about youth, friendship, community and embracing life as it comes.

Casual Guest (1993)

A 1993 Russian language short film written and directed by Vladimir Tyulkin, starring Ivan Makhlin, Aleksey Katsovitch and Elena Shemyakina.