Clique Film Festival to take place in Almaty

Clique Film Festival will take place in Almaty on November 6-9, Tengrinews reports.

The Festival will present the most widely discussed and successful European, American and Kazakh auteur films that will be screened in Arman cinema located at #104 Dostyk Avenue at the crossing with Abai Avenue.

Initially, Russian drama film Leviathan directed by Andrei Zvyagintsev that won the Best Screenplay Award at the Cannes Festival was supposed to open the event. However, since its release is scheduled only to early 2015, the producers did not allow the screening of the movie before its official release saying that it would hurt the film’s distribution. Therefore, the festival will be opened by Kazakh movie The Owners directed by Adilkhan Yerzhanov.

November 6

8 p.m. - The Owners, Kazakh film directed by young Kazakh director Adilkhan Yerzhanov that has won a number of international awards.

It first premiered at the 67th Cannes Festival in 2014 and it will be the first screening of the movie in Kazakhstan.

The 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 police officer. Despite not having any relatives to protect them, the brothers are not willing to give up the house without a fight.

10.30 p.m. - Whiplash, a 2014 American jazz music drama film written and directed by Damien Chazelle.

The film tells a story of a young jazz drummer Andrew who attends one of the best music schools in the country under the tutelage of the school’s fearsome jazz maestro. Andrew is a promising young drummer who gets enrolled in a music conservatory where his dreams of greatness are mentored by Terence Fletcher, a perfectionist music conductor who will stop at nothing to unleash the student's talent.

November 7

7.50 p.m. - Saint Laurent, a French biography drama film co-written and directed by Bertrand Bonello.

The film centers on the life of famous French fashion designer Saint Laurent from 1967 to 1976, when the famed fashion designer was at the peak of his career.

10.30 p.m. - The Tribe, a Ukrainian drama directed by Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy, which centers around the topic of crime and prostitution.

The film has neither subtitles nor voiceover. The trailer tells that this is "because for love and hatred you do not need translation".

The film is set in a boarding school for deaf children, where new arrival Sergey is drawn into an institutional system of organised crime, involving robbery and prostitution. He crosses a dangerous line when he falls for Yana, one of the girls to whom he is assigned. It won the Nespresso Grand Prize, as well as the France 4 Visionary Award and the Gan Foundation Support for Distribution Award at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival's International Critics' Week section.

November 8

5.40 p.m. - Winter Sleep, a 2014 Turkish drama directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

The story is set in Anatolia and centers around the significant divide between the rich and poor as well as the powerful and powerless in Turkey. The film won the Palme d'Or and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.

6.30 p.m. - Mommy, a Canadian drama film directed by Canadian Xavier Dolan.

It won the Jury Prize in Cannes in 2014. The movie tells a story of a widowed mother who is overwhelmed by the difficulty of raising her troubled, sometimes violent son as a single parent. She then begins to receive assistance and support from her mysterious new neighbor.

9 p.m. - Test, a drama film directed by Russian Alexander Kott.

The movie unfolds the story of a passionate love of two young people at a harsh time of the first nuclear bomb test conducted in Semipalatinsk in eastern Kazakhstan in 1949. The film is the winner of the Grand Prix of Kinotavr (the Sochi Open Russian Film Festival) as well as Best International Feature Award at Turkey's Golden Orange festival in Antalya.

November 9

5.30 p.m. - The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Shorts Programme.

It presents six best contemporary short films shot by British filmmakers originally shown as part of BAFTA’s Summer Shorts Film Festival in the UK.

6 p.m. - Nagima, Kazakh movie directed by Zhanna Isabayeva.

It tells a story of two orphanage graduates Nagima and Anna who are struggling to survive. The protagonist Nagima works in a cafe to make the ends meet: pay the rent for the shabby house where the two girls live in and help her eight months pregnant roommate Anna. When Anya dies in childbirth, Nagima despite her stubborn desire to keep the newborn baby girl away from the same fate, witnesses her taken away to an orphanage. Left all alone, she tries to find her mother. Her mother rejects her once again and the circle of hopelessness seems to tighten around Nagima.

The movie is the winner of the Grand-Prix at the Deauville Asian Film Festival in France.

8 p.m. - Two Days, One Night, Belgian drama film directed by brothers Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne.

The movie centers around a young wife and mother Sandra, who works in a small solar-panel factory in Seraing, Belgium. She suffers a nervous breakdown and is forced to take time off from her job. During her absence, her colleagues realize they are able to cover her shifts by working slightly longer hours and the management proposes a €1,000 bonus to all staff if they agree to make Sandra redundant. Sandra later returns to work and discovers that her fate rests in the hands of her 16 co-workers, and she must visit each of them over the course of a weekend to persuade them to reject the monetary bonus. However, most of the co-workers need the proposed bonus for their own families and Sandra faces an uphill battle to keep her job before the crucial vote on Monday morning.

The tickets for the movies can be purchased in the booking offices of Arman cinema and Caesar cinema located at #50 Furmanov Str. at the crossing with Gogol Str. The tickets are also available online at the official website of the cinema and ticketon.kz.

By Assel Satubaldina