Synopsis

Young beauty Saltanat must try to pay the family’s notable debt following her father’s death to avoid a prison sentence. She is forced to trade her idyllic countryside life for the cutthroat city, accompanied by her childhood friend and admirer Kuandyk, who decides to protect the love of his life. Once in the city, she discovers her relatives is tricking her into a fraud. Getting its title from Camus’ The Stranger, the film by Adilkhan Yerzhanov is a minimalist effort but colourful and offbeat melodrama to confront the problems of corruption and poverty of his native Kazakhstan.

Cannes Film Festival
Tokyo International Film Festival