Yellow Cat

Kermek returns after three years in prison to find that a criminal gang has taken control of his hometown. To escape the local gangsters, Kermek and his girlfriend Eva take to the Kazakh steppes, with plans of opening a cinema in the middle of nowhere.

Yellow Cat is a charming and melancholy comedy about naïve dreamers on the run, full of delightful visual details and deadpan humor, and seemingly cobbled together from pieces of film history. Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s direction recalls the visual style of filmmakers like Aki Kaurismäki and Wes Anderson, as well as classic silent comedies, and its story of comes across as a quirky re-telling of Terrence Malick’s Badlands. In a remote village populated by Robert de Niro-imitating gangsters, Kermek finds himself obsessed with Jean-Pierre Melville’s noir classic Le Samouraï, which he has never seen in its entirety.

Atli Bjarnason

Director

Adilkhan Yerzhanov (f. 1982) was born in the Jezkazgan region of Kazakhstan and studied film direction at the Kazakhstan National Academy of Arts. He has directed several award-winning films and received the Asia Pacific Screen Award for Achievement in Directing for A Dark, Dark Man (2019). Yellow Cat is his ninth feature and premiered at Venice Film Festival.