KOSH BOL, GULSARY!

Kyrgyzstan in the fifties. The kolkhoz farmer and communist Tanabai says goodbye to his dying favourite horse. In doing so recollects a long and varied life spent growing old together with his proud stallion Gulsary in the harsh Kyrgyz mountains. Tanabai allows his own life, that was so closely related with that of the horse, to once again pass him by. In his perspective is mirrored the drama of the socialist period.

According to the director the aim of the film was to portay the destiny of an individual who had experienced the tragedy of collectivisation. In saying that, this wasn't the first attempt to make a film of Chinghiz Aitmatov's novel "Farewell, Gulsary!" (1966): in 1969 Sergey Urusevsky produced a masterly adaptation, for which Aitmatov wrote the screenplay himself. The director of this new adaptation found the previous film too poetic and fairytale-like and wanted to take this opportunity to give the story a newer, more modern tone. He tries to show the lack of individual freedom of the time, a period in which everyone was obliged to submit to the collective will.

Sadly the author of this literary classic did not live to experience this remake, which was awarded with the Grand-Prix award at the Eurasia International Film Festival in 2008.