The Cinematheque

“Making an unconventional shift from a depiction of political or national disenchantment towards a sensuous portrayal of companionship, love, and grief, The Touch is a small masterpiece of Central Asian cinema.”

Ilia Ryzhenko, Samizdat Eastern European Film Festival 2025

When the fire of an ideology fades, and slogans and promises dissipate, a nation must attempt to rediscover its inner core. Director Amanzhol Aituarov and his Kyrgyz writing partner Bayan Sarygulov turn to a parable of two drifters wandering the bygone Kazakh steppe to reflect on moral loss in late Soviet Kazakhstan. A blind girl (perhaps spared the sight of the world’s wickedness) and a hardened runaway slave form an unlikely partnership. Both deprived of a kind touch, they set out to follow the sun in search of a lost home. The beautifully captured steppe becomes the perfect setting for their journey, exuding at once innate severity and warmth. Whether their newfound bond can survive the tests of a corrupted world—and whether they can remember the path back to the sacred values of their roots—is the question this unjustly overlooked film poses.

In Kazakh and Russian with English subtitles

Preceded by a video introduction from director Amanzhol Aituarov.