“Yoʻl kira” translates from Uzbek as “fare.” It is the price each of us pays as we move forward and come to terms with our past. The program features experimental films that reflect on personal and historical traumas—cultural amnesia, the fragility of existence, the loss of roots, and environmental disasters.

Balqaş Jyry (Artcom, Kazakhstan, 2025)

Balqaş Jyry is a film by the all-female collective Artcom, continuing their long-standing practice as part of the Care for Balkhash initiative. In the film, Lake Balkhash finds a voice and takes on a tangible form. Through the movement of water, the breath of the wind, and the rhythm of the steppe, Balkhash tells its story—a story of the deep connection between nature and humanity, severed by colonialism, industrialization, and ecological violence. Inspired by the poetic tradition of zhyr and the steppe philosophy of qazaqlyq, the film restores Lake Balkhash’s agency, its capacity to resist, its right to recovery, and its future.

Parallax (Anvar Safo, Uzbekistan, 2025)

A reflection on memory and perception, created from archival footage from the 1940s–1980s. The past is reconstructed through found fragments that take on new meanings depending on the angle of view. A brief and immersive journey into a vanishing mahalla, where tradition is preserved in barely perceptible traces and reflections of time.

Lady of Heaven (Daria Andijan, Netherlands, 2025)

“This is a journey through the sky on a flying carpet with my grandmother, who has just been released from a concentration camp in Xinjiang, China. As we soar upward, the carpet transforms into a tapestry of Sumerian myths, dreams, and fragmented memories, weaving together the past and present of my mother’s story in Turkestan.”

Shıqy (Zhanar Bereketova, Kazakhstan, 2025)

A raw egg moves between natural and urban landscapes—rolling, cracking, disappearing. The environment and the person merely guide it, accompanying its body along a temporal trajectory. Simple actions come together in a rhythmic observation of fragility and transience.

i saw clear faces in my dream last night (Sana Serkebaeva, Kazakhstan/United Kingdom, 2025)

Reflections on dreams and memory: fragmentary visions stitched together by faded recollections and a slow dissolution into oblivion. A Kazakh lullaby sounds like a delicate thread leading to something half-forgotten—not to what is stored in memory, but to what lives in sensations, hangs in the air, and trembles on the verge of recognition.

The Happy Prince (Saidamir Ubaidullaev, Uzbekistan, 2024)

A short diary-style film about three months in the life of a man who finds it difficult to be happy.