Tulpan

This first narrative film from Russian documentary director Sergei Dvortsevoy is fiction, but thoroughly steeped in the landscape and nomadic lives of shepherds on the vast plains of Kazakhstan. An optimistic young Kazakh named Asa (Askhat Kuchinchirekov) returns home from service in the Russian navy to join his sister's family as a shepherd, scraping out a living on the barren Hunger Steppe. To start his own flock, he must first get a wife, and (dressed to impress in his naval uniform) he woos the shy Tulpan, unseen but for her eyes glimpsed behind a chador. This is no romantic fable, however: the sheep are starving, the potential bride refuses him, and Asa's rowdy young buddy (whose truck links these folks to the rest of the world) wants Asa to leave with him for the city. The story unfolds with a distinctive, deliberate rhythm that suggests a different pace of life, and Dvortsevoy shoots each scene as a single, unbroken handheld shot, which adds unexpected drama to the scenes, notably a live sheep birth in which Asa must serve as midwife. A lovingly made film that captures a rural way of life with a mix of realism and poetry, this is highly recommended. (S. Axmaker)