Official Oscar® Submission for Best Foreign Language Film from Kazakhstan: ‘The Road to Mother’

What begins as a fascinating look at the collectivization of formerly privately owned cattle in a small mountain village in Kazakhstan ends as an epic journey of a boy into manhood and even old age before he finds his way back to his mother.

The Road to Mother is set during one of the most tragic periods in the history of the former USSR Republic of Kazakhstan. Director Akan Satayev tells a story of the power of a mother’s love which endures challenges of the turbulent times. The storyline covers a timespan from the 1930s to the present day with key elements of collectivization, war and postwar years for the Kazakh people.

The director was inspired by what his parents told him when he was a child.

According to Kazakhstan’s tradition, all legends are passed from the older generation to younger generation orally. It is the story of a lonely mother, who for twenty years, walked daily to the outskirts of the village at dawn and dusk in hopes of meeting her son returning from war. Of course, the great love of a mother for her child, and the boundless hope which underlies this story, had a deep impact on me.

Initially the director shared his vision with producer Alija Nazarbaeva (the youngest daughter of the President of Kazakstan) who says,

As a true Kazakh, I couldn’t be indifferent to such emotional image, that truly represents my nation,

The events shown unfolded in my country’s most difficult time: the era of collectivization. “(These included) jute (livestock famine due to lack of no vegetation), military occupation and the hardship of post-war years.” The main character of the film — the Mother’s son — shows the incredible resilience of the spirit of courage and unbelievable dedication. He lives through an orphanage, war, capture, a Soviet camp, and yet he still finds the road to the mother. His life’s motto is: ‘the one with open soul finds life’s happiness…’

Those were the times in which the Soviet authorities were eradicating nomadic way of life, displacing people to where they were condemned to death by starvation.” What is the name of the tree that the mother visits every day in hope of seeing her son return? “Such a tree does not exist in the desert. It is simply a symbol of resistance, it’s a symbol of a mother’s heart regardless to her religion and her nationality.

The above is taken from the website of the Embassy of Kazakhstan.

The image of the ever patient mother and the ever faithful love of his life who were both left behind when our hero was kidnapped by townsmen who refused to take on the Soviet yoke verges on overly sentimental. But it remains of great interest to see that both women speak up for themselves and stand up to authority when needed. This seems to be the adaptive mode of women in overly masculine, patriarchal societies. Seen through our modern western eyes, what stands out most is how the usual sexual harassement holds sway and yet is still confronted and even avoided by women.

Kazakhstan has submitted 12 films to the Oscars since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. In 2007, Russian director Sergey Bodrov’s film Mongol was nominated for best foreign-language film, but Austria’s contender, Stefan Ruzowitsky’s The Counterfeiters took the Oscar.

The Kazakh steppes, north of the Tien Shan Mountains, south of Russian Siberia, west of the Caspian Sea, and east of China, has been inhabited since the Stone Age. It is a land rich in natural resources, with recent oil discoveries putting it among the world leaders in potential oil reserves. The newly independent Republic of Kazakhstan ranks ninth in the world in geographic size (roughly the size of Western Europe) and is the largest country in the world without an ocean port.

The Kazakhs, a Turkic people ethnically tied to the Uighur (We-goor) people of western China and similar in appearance to Mongolians, emerged in 1991 from over sixty years of life behind the Iron Curtain. Joseph Stalin exiled thousands of prisoners to some of his most brutal gulags which were in Kazakhstan. It was also to Kazakhstan that he repatriated millions of people of all different ethnicities, in an effort to “collectivize” the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan was also the site of the Soviet nuclear test programs and Nikita Khrushchev’s ill-conceived “Virgin Lands” program. These seventy years had a profound and long-lasting effect on these formerly nomadic people.

Kazakhs are historically a nomadic people, and thus many of their cultural symbols reflect nomadic life. The horse is probably the most central part of Kazakh culture. Kazakhs love horses, riding them for transportation in the villages, using them for farming, racing them for fun, and eating them for celebrations. Many Kazakhs own horses and keep pictures of them in their houses or offices. Also a product of their formally nomadic lives is the yurt,a Central Asian dwelling resembling a tepee, which was transportable and utilitarian on the harsh Central Asian steppe. These small white homes are still found in some parts of Kazakhstan, but for the most part they are used in celebrations and for murals and tourist crafts.

Also central to Kazakh symbolism are Muslim symbols. Kazakhs are Muslim by history, and even after seventy years of Soviet atheism, they incorporate Islamic symbols in their everyday life. The traditionally Muslim star and crescent can be widely seen, as can small Muslim caps and some traditionally Muslim robes and headscarves in the villages.

Kazakhs are also very proud of their mountains, rare animals such as snow leopards, eagles, and falcons (a large eagle appears on the Kazakh flag under a rising sun), and their national instrument, the dombra, a two-stringed instrument with a thin neck and potbelly base, resembling a guitar.

Read more: http://www.everyculture.com/Ja-Ma/Kazakhstan.html#ixzz4y3ozFozu

All of these are included in this epic story which sometimes seems as if it is a television series, so long does the story go on from youth to old age. It offers a fascinating window onto a world we know very little about beyond its name as one of the many “stans” of Central Asia.