A DARK-DARK MAN (CHYORNIY, CHYORNIY CHELOVEK)
Kazakhstan, France, 2019 / 110 min / Kazakh & Russian OV with French and English subt. / crime thriller
A corrupt cop discovers his conscience when a journalist starts looking into the murder of a young boy.
A boy is murdered in a Kazakh village. Detective Bekzat wants to wrap the inquiry up quickly: after all, the perpetrator has already been found by local police officers. Bezkat’s cowardly superior orders him to get rid of the suspect – a common occurrence in this corrupt society. But the routine job is ruined when a journalist, Ariana, arrives from the city and insists the case be properly investigated. Caught in a web of bribery, blackmail and intimidation, sets out to conduct a real investigation into circumstances surrounding the boy’s and follow procedure for the first time in his career. Gradually, he regains his moral compass.
| Mon | 09/03 | 16:00 | Cinémathèque | KZ & RU OV with FR & EN subt. | Public | https://ticket.luxembourg-ticket.lu/luxfilmfest/webticket/shop?event=28942&kassi... |
“The mood of escalating menace is countered by a mischievously heightened sense of the absurd. […] a deliciously pessimistic testament, for those on its deliberate, low-frequency wavelength, to the power of an unapologetically auteurist, art-house approach to genre. But like Bezkat catching sight of himself in the mirror while in the act of killing a man, Yerzhanov’s twisted film is also gratifyingly self-aware, an ironic and knowing transposition of urban crime thriller archetypes — the straight-out-of-Jim Thompson cast of venal characters; the sleazy neon score; the heady air of fatalism — into the last place on earth you’d expect them to flourish so daringly, so disturbingly and so very darkly. […] [A] brilliant, diamond-hard film noir.” Jessica Klang, Variety, 24/10/19
- Achievement in Directing, Asia Pacific Screen Awards, 2019 (Australia)
Adilkhan Yerzhanov, a film director and scriptwriter, was born in the city of Djezkazgan, Kazakhstan, in 1982. In 2009 he graduated from the Kazakh National Academy of Arts, as a film director. He is a two-time participant of the Cannes Film Festival with The Owners (2014) and The Gentle Indifference of the World (2018). He is member of the European Film Academy and the Asia Pacific Screen Awards Academy.
- 2019 – A Dark-Dark Man
- 2019 – Boy Atbaya
- 2018 – The Gentle Indifference of the World
- 2018 – Nochnoy Bog
- 2016 – The Plague at the Karatas Village
- 2015 – The Story of Kazakh Cinema – Underground of Kazakhfilm (documentaire / documentary / Dokumentarfilm)
- 2014 – The Owners
- 2013 – Constructors
- 2011 – Rieltor
- 2007 – Bakhytzhamal (short / court-métrage / Kurzfilm)