Screen can exclusively reveal the first trailer for Mukagali, the latest film from Kazakh director Bolat Kalymbetov, which will have its world premiere in competition at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival on Saturday (November 20).

The film is a biopic of Kazakh poet Mukagali Makataev, who since his death in 1976 has become one of the country’s most celebrated writers.

The film concentrates on three years of his life when he left university after Leonid Brezhnev’s rise to lead the Soviet Union; Makataev opposed communism and worked to preserve the independent Kazakh language.

It is a second feature in three years for Kalymbetov after 2018’s Talan; prior to that, he hadn’t directed a feature since 1993’s The Last Cold Days, co-directed with Bulat Iskakov.

Mukagali is produced by Almat Massalim, with a cast including Aslanbek Zhanbalayev, Tolganai Bisembayeva and Raushan Mazhitova.

Kalymbetov appears as an actor in Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s Herd Immunity, another Kazakh title which debuts at Tallinn this week.

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