Harmony Lessons

Emir Baigazin's 2013 Kazakh film is set in a provincial school and opens with Aslan, thirteen, humiliated in front of his classmates. From that moment he develops an obsession with cleanliness and order; when the extortion system at school meets his loneliness at home, violence becomes inevitable. The film's strength is framing bullying not as a school matter but as a model of hierarchy: the order among the children is the system outside reduced in scale. Baigazin composes his scenes almost geometrically, with empty steppe and symmetrical interiors. It won the Silver Bear for cinematography at Berlin. The scenes involving animals and the violence are harsh. Who it's for: viewers interested in Central Asian cinema and formally rigorous films. Who it's not for: anyone avoiding scenes of animals being killed, or wanting a hopeful close.