A comedy about two brothers traveling across Central Asia to find their father and a better life. The debut movie by important Tajik filmmaker Bakhtiyor Khudoynazarov.
Two brothers, 17-year-old Farukh and seven-year-old Azamat, nicknamed Doughnut, live in a Tajik town with their grandmother. Farukh is involved in petty crime and wants to send his younger brother off to their father, who has long left the family and works as a doctor at a recreational facility in a different part of the country. The brothers embark on a journey: the train runs along a narrow-gauge railroad, past mountains and plains, small towns and villages. The driver stops at stations here and there, leaves and picks up parcels, and takes new passengers. When the brothers finally reach their father’s house, they meet his new girlfriend. Farukh prepares to return, but Doughnut does not intend to stay.
The film, which premiered the year the Soviet Union collapsed, tells the story of the breakdown of family ties and yet is also a Kerouacian tale set on the road. A slow journey across the Tajik plains, chance encounters and road accidents, filmed in a manner that is as poetic as it is documentary, occupy most of the screen time. The journey accelerates the growing-up of the child protagonist, who for the first time makes an independent decision and chooses his brother over his father. Although the child’s realization of his own subjectivity is not yet linked to his physicality, as in later Central Asian films of the 1990s, Farukh and Doughnut open a gallery of maturing children and teenagers in an era of transition.
The screening will be introduced by Firuz Sabzaliyev, who played one of the main roles.
The film will be screened in Russian and Tajik with Russian subtitles.
Brother
Directed by Bakhtiyor Khudoynazarov
USSR, 1991. 94 min.
16+