Harmony Lessons
- Timur Aidarbekov Aslan
- Aslan Anarbayev: Bolat
- Mukhtar Andassov: Mirsain
- Anelya Adilbekova: Akzhan
- Omar Adilov: Madi
- Chief investigator: Beibitzhan Muslimov
- Bagila Kobe Nova: Aslan's grandmother
Harmony Lessons ( Russian: Уроки гармонии, Kazakh: Асланның сабақтары ) is a feature film by the Kazakh director Emir Baigazin from the year 2013, he tells the story of 13 -year-old Aslan, who sits down at a village school against humiliation and exclusion to fight back..
Action
In school, an unnamed village near Almaty has among the students a hierarchical system of blackmail and humiliation emerged. The shy and of a zealous cleaning compulsion plagued Aslan is teased and ostracized by his classmates. Especially the violent gang leader Bolat sets him there. In his grandmother's house Aslan takes out his repressed aggression of trapped cockroaches, for which he invents always perfidious and absurd methods of torture. Mirsain, a transfer student from the city, initially opposes the prevailing power structures, but has his powerlessness finally see that. After Bolat another classmate hospitalized beats to get to its new sneakers, Aslan decides to kill the adversary.
When a little later the blood-smeared corpse Bolats is found, advised both Aslan and Mirsain suspected. In the detention center they will be tortured for days by the officials; but both students maintain their innocence.
Background
Harmony Lessons is the feature film debut of the Kazakh director Baigazin. The film was funded by the World Cinema Fund of the German Federal Cultural Foundation. The first Kazakh production in general, he received an invitation to the competition of the Berlinale. There he celebrated on February 14, 2013 its world premiere.
Reception
The Festival reviews were mainly positive. In addition to the social issues and the performance of the young cast, especially the aesthetics and the camera work of the film was praised. So David Assmann writes in the Tagesspiegel, awarded " the carefully composed images of the cameraman Aziz Zhambakiyev ' " "of the act, the neutrality of an experimental arrangement " and irradiated at the same time " a poetic, almost meditative tranquility ". The Reader Jury of the Berliner Morgenpost chose Harmony Lessons for best film of the competition.
Awards
Cameraman Aziz Zhambakiyev won the Silver Bear for an outstanding artistic contribution.