Beshkempir, Abdikalikov’s feature début, is the first truly independent film from the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan. The maker was inspired by an ancestral custom that still applies among Kyrgyz: if a woman can’t have children, the couple is offered a child that is no longer suckling.Beshkempir looks like any other child: he leads a peaceful and untroubled life, joins in the games and mischief that match his age and at the start of his puberty he has his first innocent sexual and amorous feelings for the girl next door. In other words, the life of a child on his way to maturity. Until one day he finds out the terrible news that his Mum and Dad are not his biological parents. Overnight his best friendturns into his rival and even his enemy and his dream girl goes off cycling with someone else. If his mother is not his mother and his father is not his father, our young hero thinks, then he is no one either. Despite the fact that the painful discovery makes his life unbearable, Beshkempir tries to overcome his problems.Without becoming sentimental or moralistic, Beshkempir gives an unvarnished and penetrating portrait of Kirghiz youth. The film shared a Silver Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival.
