Kazakhstan has selected Akan Satayev’s Road to Mother as its candidate for the best foreign-language Oscar.
The decision was announced Friday in the Kazakh capital Almaty during the second annual national ‘Tulpar’ film awards.
A historic drama that counts Aliya Nazarbayeva, daughter of Kazakhstan’s long-ruling president Nursultan Nazarbayev, as its general producer, earlier this month the film won the main prize at the 1st Eurasian Bridge festival in Yalta, Crimea and also picked up best film at Croatia’s Marco Polo film festival in August.
The story of several generations of a Kazakh family from the 1930s to the present time, Road to Mother traces the most momentous events in the history of Kazakhstan, through war, separation and the determination of the family to remain united.
Last year it won best film at the first national Tulpar film awards held during the annual Eurasia Film Festival in Almaty; on Friday at the second, now independently-organized Tulpar awards in Almaty, another of Satayev’s films Rayoni (Districts), a gritty contemporary drama of city life, again took the top national film award.
Kazakhstan has submitted 12 films to the Oscars since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991; in 2007 Russian director Sergey Bodrov’s film Mongol was nominated for best foreign-language film, but was beaten to the winning slot by Austria’s contender, Stefan Ruzowitsky’s The Counterfeiters.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
