Hollywood Meets Kazakhstan At 13th Eurasia International Film Festival

Kazakhstan is welcoming Hollywood legends as they arrive in Astana for the 13th Eurasia International Film Festival, Central Asia’s largest film forum accredited by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations.

The six-day festival, running from July 22-28, has brought together Adrien Brody, the youngest actor to win an Oscar for Best Actor after starring in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist; Nicholas Cage, who won an Oscar for his heartbreaking performance in Leaving Las Vegas; and Oscar-nominee John Malkovich.

The famous American actors are leading master classes, and Cage has opened a children’s film festival entitled “Five Continents,” being held for the first time.

“Nicholas Cage will open this festival himself,” said Arystanbek Mukhamediuly, Kazakhstan’s Minister of Culture and Sports said during a press briefing held on July 20.  “As you know, less attention is paid to children’s cinema in our country. We want to draw attention to children’s films, as they are in a big need,” Mukhamediuly said.

The first Eurasia International Film Festival was held in 1998 in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city and former capital. Winning films, directors and actors over the years have represented countries like Azerbaijan, Croatia, France, Georgia, Germany, Iran, Israel and Japan, amongst others.

Now in its thirteenth year, the festival is featuring nearly 300 films from all over the world produced over the past year. More than 1,000 applications were submitted for this past cycle.

The festival opened with a screening of Sound of Silence by Indian director Bijukumar Damodaran’s. Valerian and the City of Thousands Planets, directed by Frenchmen Luc Besson, will close the event on Friday.

Kazakhstan has a 25-year history of independent cinema, and produces about 15 full-length films each year. It first submitted a film to the Oscars in 1992 and has done so annually since 2006. Sergei Bodrov's Mongol made the shortlist in 2007, making it the only Central Asian country thus far to have been nominated for a foreign language film at the Oscars. Just this past year Kazakhstan submitted the historical drama Amanat, in the same category.

According to Hollywood Reporter, in 2015 Kazakhstan released 344 features across the country’s 89 cinemas and 246 screens, most of them Hollywood and international productions. Box office sales that year hit $47 million, with domestic films accounting for $3.3 million.

“The theme of the current film festival is ‘Connecting Cultures’, and it is in line with the concept of the International Exhibition “Astana Expo 2017,” said Almaz Nurazkhan, the director of the Department for Culture and Arts of the Ministry of Culture and Sports. Kazakhstan’s capital is simultaneously hosting the 2017 world’s fair, which runs from June 10 – September 10 and is centered on energy production and technologies.