3 months ago
2
Pune-based Arya Rothe, 36, director-producer, self-taught editor, and co-founder of NoCut Film Collective, is known for her International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) award-winning diagnostic documentary A Rifle and a Bag (2020). The 2023 IDA (International Documentary Association) Logan Elevate Award victor has present edited a Kazakh documentary, River Dreams, which has its satellite premiere successful Forum conception of the 76th Berlinale.
The Kristina Mikhailova-directed documentary is the precise archetypal Kazakh documentary to beryllium screened astatine Berlinale. And Mikhailova is the 2nd Kazakh pistillate manager to look successful the festival’s authoritative programmes, since Zhanna Isabayeva’s Nagima was successful the Forum conception successful 2014. Since then, Kazakhstan’s films astatine Berlinale person been constricted to fabrication works directed by men.
Last year, landmark buildings crossed Kazakhstan were lit up successful orangish to people the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, portion of the 16-day yearly ‘Orange the World’ run of the UN that the state observes. The non-fiction movie River Dreams begins with a stream of orange, too.
Set on a stream successful Kazakhstan, River Dreams is a almighty exploration of women’s interior worlds. As currents determination done h2o and memory, women laic bare love, rage, endurance, and survival. Their voices chopped done silence, transforming scars into acts of resistance. Tenderness becomes defiance. The stream is some witnesser and refuge, a abstraction wherever dreams are whispered, and information is confronted head-on. With its bold cinematic language, this profoundly humanist movie is simply a tender enactment of defiance and resistance.
Arya Rothe, director, producer, editor, and co-founder of NoCut Film Collective.
River girls
Mikhailova says, “It was my imagination to travel a stream from opening to end, from glaciers to sands. That’s precisely what happened: first, I travelled the 130 km connected foot, by bike, oregon connected a motorbike, and past I repeated the travel with our squad and a camera. It was the escapade of a lifetime. River Dreams is simply a long, unthinkable escapade spanning astir 8 years. I pitched this task for the archetypal clip 8 years ago, but the existent accumulation took 5 years.”
She wanted to recognize “at slightest 1 river, to perceive her voice, taking a benignant of posthumanist approach.” River Aksay, which lies adjacent to her puerility house, became the taxable of her lens. “I observed her, studied her, and 1 time I conscionable fell successful emotion with her,” she adds, “Rivers are truthful vast, truthful powerful, particularly upland rivers. It’s mesmerising! And I recognised myself successful the spot of this river. I recognised a spot successful myself that had ever frightened me. Then I spoke with galore different women who resonated with the thought ‘I americium a river’. It turned retired that each of us, the stream girls, could talk the aforesaid language.” So, River Dreams became a long, tender, hopeless monologue of a river, told done the voices of the women surviving successful Kazakhstan. “It is simply a governmental and societal statement, but radically tender,” she adds.
Breaking stereotypes
The Forum enactment makes the movie eligible for a fig of awards, including the Berlinale Documentary Award, FIPRESCI and Caligari awards, among others. Mikhailova calls her movie “a frank, sincere, and hopeless statement, created not lone by the movie squad but besides by each the ‘river girls’ and radical we met during filming. You tin consciousness it successful each infinitesimal of the movie due to the fact that I person an quality to spot with her heart, and our superb cinematographer Amir Zarubekov (it is his diagnostic debut arsenic well) captured this successful each frame, each composition. I was thrilled to enactment with specified talented people.”
Mikhailova hates stereotypes astir Kazakhstan, having been astatine the receiving extremity constantly. “I americium precise blessed that my movie volition destruct astatine slightest a fewer of them,” she adds.
Women’s lot, a cosmopolitan theme
The movie resonated with Rothe, who recalls, “I met Dana (Sabitova) and Kristina for the archetypal clip erstwhile I was pitching a task arsenic a shaper astatine DOK Leipzig successful 2022. That was erstwhile I archetypal caught a glimpse of River Dreams [which they had been moving connected for 7 years] and recovered the task precise intriguing. We passionately complained to each different astir the deficiency of operation successful our countries to enactment documentary filmmaking, but thing work-related came of it then. Based connected a trailer I had edited that she’d seen, successful August 2024, Kristina near maine a connection asking if I would edit her film”
When Rothe watched the material, she recovered it “deeply relatable, cautiously crafted and filmed with uncommon tenderness.” Soon after, she travelled to Almaty to enactment connected the edit for implicit a month. “I was besides capable to acquisition her satellite firsthand. I saw the river, met her movie colleagues... We spoke for hours astir the past of Kazakhstan earlier its penetration by Russia. The caller Kazakhstan, formed aft the autumn of communism, is the aforesaid property arsenic Kristina: 32 years old. Kristina’s is astir apt the archetypal documentary that focuses connected the stories of young women calved successful this caller Kazakhstan, and connected however its history, assemblage past, and patriarchy proceed to signifier their lives today. I witnessed firsthand however hard it has been for Dana [Sabitova, producer] and Kristina to unrecorded successful Kazakhstan portion making a movie this radical. They emotion their country, and it is precisely that emotion which fuels their request to critique it- but doing truthful is acold from easy.”
The project’s archetypal unsmooth cut, submitted to Dok Incubator, was selected for an eight-month edit laboratory successful Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which helps you decorativeness your movie and transportation it astatine IDFA (the prestigious International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam). Completed successful September 2025, Rothe edited the movie with Mikhailova, who says, “Arya brought a bright, caller position to the material, and we discovered galore parallels betwixt women’s issues successful India and Kazakhstan, which enriched the movie greatly.”
What Rothe — who was taken successful by Kazakh cinema, particularly Aizhan Kassymbek’s Madina (2023) — took distant the astir from moving connected this task was “the uncommon acquisition of stepping into the tender yet extremist satellite of the women of Kazakhstan. Their courageousness and passionateness lifted me, reaffirming the magic of cross-cultural collaboration I prosecute consistently successful my work,” she says.
First of galore to come
Mikhailova asserts, “It’s the archetypal Kazakh documentary movie successful the past of Berlinale. Not more, not less. It is besides important to enactment that River Dreams is simply a debut diagnostic some for manager and producer. Since Nagima (2014), films from Kazakhstan included successful the Berlinale programme person been exclusively fabrication films directed by men.”
The connection she speaks champion is cinema, Mikhailova says. “I recognize cinema the most, I explicit myself done it best, and it is an creator signifier that has astir wholly shaped me. What I worth successful immoderate creator signifier is radicalism, due to the fact that it has the imaginable to alteration things. But radicalism is precise inconvenient successful mean life. And making a extremist movie is adjacent much painful, long, expensive, and difficult. So, erstwhile River Dreams was invited to Berlinale, particularly the Forum Special section, it felt similar a enactment of caller air. It is simply a designation of being accepted arsenic you are, and being accepted by others. It felt precise personal.”
She is alert that her documentary movie tin beryllium seen arsenic “complex and ambiguous”, but she besides loves and welcomes “provocation”. “Within the film, determination is endless emotion for Kazakhstan, for my home, for my stream girls, but besides a batch of audacity, anger, irony, and protestation against what hurts maine successful my country,” she concludes.
