★★★★★★★★★★7/10

Kelin (Gulsharat Zhubyeva) is a beautiful girl about to be married. Her father negotiates a bride price between two suitors. A hunter (Kuandyk Kystykbayev) is Kelin’s choice for husband but he loses the bidding to a Yak herder (Yerzhan Nurymbet). Besides a new husband, she shares a simple stone abode with her shaman like mother in-law (Turakhan Sadykova) and her husband’s younger brother* (Nurzhan Turganbayev). She soon finds that her life isn’t so bad and has a sexual awakening. Life gets complicated when her hunter suitor wants her back.

Devoid of dialogue, this film is visual and sensory experience. All communications is conveyed by looks, body language and the occasional grunt. Strong emotions are immediate but the more subtle ones were far harder to read. The lack of dialogue hurts the film as there were depths that couldn’t be explored further. The film is still powerful but it could have been elevated.

This is writer and director Ermek Tursunov first feature film. The story is fairly simple but he certainly hasn’t chosen to go safe. To go with a historical drama, without dialogue and filmed in a winter location… that takes guts.

This film may lack lines but it’s got loads of passion. It feels timeless and could be dropped into any culture’s historic past. As a matter of fact you could easily mistaken the story about Eskimos, Native Americans (both North and South), Tibetans, Mongolians or even the Sammi people of Scandinavia.

*This is ambiguous as he could be the herder’s son

Atali Mountains, bride, family, film, herding, History, hunting, info, jealousy, Kazakhstan, Love, mountains, movie, review, tribal Drama, Kazakhstan