About the project
So many people, so many stories. This is the story of a little girl in a small country with a huge issue. The main character, an 8-year-old girl Umut, lives with her grandmother in a mountain city of Kyrgyzstan. Little Umut carries a big longing in her little heart. Her mother is a migrant, she left in search of a better job. Her doll is always lying next to Umut. Just a doll for others, but for her it’s the whole world. However, no one understands this

About the author
Saule Mukanbetova was born in Kyrgyzstan on May 20, 1999. In 2017, she graduated from high school, and in the same year she entered the Kyrgyz-Turkish University “Manas” at the Faculty of Communications, the Department of Radio, Television and Cinema and graduated from the university in 2022.
She took part in the filming of films as an assistant director, as well as as a cameraman. The film “Umut” is her debut work, which was filmed as a graduation project.

About the project
A documentary about a resident of a remote village in the Naryn region of Kyrgyzstan. The main character is the captain of the national team of the nomad game “kok boru". He watches the broadcasts of these national games daily with his family before selling his own racehorse to buy a bus ticket and go to the city in search of a high-paying job.

About the authors
Both Dastan Borkoshev and Danysh Akylbekov are part of “Expedition” — a community of young Kyrgyz cinematographers, who discover new stories from all over the country and share them in short documentary form.
Dastan Borkoshev is a film director, an artist and a graphic designer, a founder of “Zerger” creative agency. He studied at the film school of Marat Sarulu and participated in Ilya Tomashevich's workshop on the art of cinema.
Danysh Akylbekov is a screenwriter and director, who also took part in Ilya Tomashevich’s workshop and had an immigrant experience, while studying and working in Moscow for 6 years, where he shot his first short film.