Reviewing the 67th Cannes Film Festival, Geoff Andrew of Head of Film Programme at BFI Southbank included Kazakhstani film The Oweners by Adilkhan Yerzhanov in his Cannes Top 10, Tengrinews reports.
Reviewing the 67th Cannes Film Festival, Geoff Andrew of Head of Film Programme at BFI Southbank included Kazakhstani film The Oweners by Adilkhan Yerzhanov in his Cannes Top 10, Tengrinews reports.
“Then there was my strangest film of the festival: Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s The Owners, an unremittingly bleak but occasionally darkly amusing tale of two young brothers and their ailing sister trying to hold on to their family hovel in the face of opposition from violent squatters, corrupt cops, widespread injustice and sheer bad luck. It all ends very badly indeed, but somehow Yerzhanov’s deadpan style makes the almost inexorable slide towards catastrophe wholly compelling, notwithstanding some very odd moments featuring improbable dancing to bad rock ’n’ roll and repeated allusions to Van Gogh. Bizarre, then, but a real discovery. That’s Cannes for you…” Andrew wrote in his review.
The Owners film draws an absurd yet dramatic picture of two families fighting over a house. Two brothers who have a sickly little sister and the mother insane with grief on their hands are being evicted from their house by a local villager and his relative, a district policeman. But the brothers, despite of not having any relatives to protect them, are not willing to leave the house without a fight.
Yerzhanov’s film premiered in the Special Screenings of the 67th Cannes Film Festival.