Student

Student

2012. Kazakhstan. Directed by Darezhan Omirbayev. With Nurlan Bajtasov, Maya Serikbayeva, Edige Bolysbayev. Spurred by his own postmodern musings and the growing inequality, corruption, and kill-or-be-killed ethic of post-Soviet Kazakhstan, a solitary philosophy student steers his directionless life toward the commission of a violent crime. Inspired by Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Omirbayev roots his tortured protagonist in the losing segment of the new capitalist era, in which the rich rise above common legal proscriptions and old-fashioned communal values. In Kazakh, Russian; English subtitles. 90 min.