The film Stranger is just as strange as its title. The Stranger is John, an American who visits Kazachstan as part of an exchange programme for ‘medical expertise’, a legal term for what turns out to be pathological anatomy. John stays for four days with a friend and colleague; a stay that can most certainly be called strange. The friend dies but people claim he had already been dead for days.Stranger follows the vicissitudes of the two men, who for instance come into contact with a bunch of gangsters. The stereotypes in which the American thinks are touched on in the film – for instance there is the humorous scene in which Johnfears that his friend will be deported to Siberia. Through allof this there is another bizarre story-line – that of a little boy who uses a photo collage to cause the death of all men he regards as a danger to his loving relationship with his mother.The actor who plays the American is himself in real life a doctor and guest in Kazachstan as part of a medical exchange programme. In view of the high degree of improvisation in the film, Jonathan Goldstein is also credited as co-writer. Stranger is also characterised by extremely dry humour.
