Member-only story
Kazakhstan’s Oscar© 2020 Entry for Best Feature: ‘The Crying Steppe’ by Marina Kunarova
Kazakhstan has recently been making a big splash in the news and usually it is because of the antics of Borat or a recurring ad on CNN. ‘The Crying Steppe’, Kazakhstan’s official Oscar submission for Best International Feature Film and official Golden Globe submission for Best Motion Picture — Foreign Language, directed by Marina Kunarova, is exactly the opposite. Marina Kunarova is the first female director from the former Soviet Union countries to ever have a film officially submitted for the Best International Film Academy Award. The film is based upon true events that befell Kazakhstan during the 1920s and 1930s ordered by Stalin.

While most Americans have heard about the genocide of the Jewish people, homosexuals and Gypsies in the Shoah, the genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman Turks, the ongoing genocide of Uighurs and the Royinga, the Bosnian, Rwandan and other…