
Marat Sarulu
Directing
Known For

During the second world war two friends work at a remote railway station in the steppes. When one dies the other's request to bury him according to Islamic rituals in a sacred place is denied by the Soviet authorities, who use that place for rocket testing.
Snowstormy Station

An ethnic Russian villager's wife gives birth to a baby that resembles a Kazakh neighbour.
Songs from the Southern Seas

A woman is led by her family to her new husband's home, to live with, presumably, his elderly mother and younger brother. Despite being forced into the marriage, she discovers that he is not such a bad catch after all but domestic bliss does not last long.
Kelin

A modern parable about three brothers whom life has divided as they each went their separate ways. Of their happy childhood and adolescent years together, only a black-and-white photograph remains, capturing the three young men at a table in front of their family home, and memories of the greenhouse that was their father's pride.
The Rough River, the Placid Sea

The Great Silk Road is the name for a mountain trade route now identifiable only by train tracks; it is on these tracks that our film finds four children at play, not far from their Kirghizstan village. A train meanders down the mountain and, following an argument, an artist is unceremoniously thrown-off a carriage and (so) eventually encounters the children.
My Brother Silk Road

One day, Nazar walks into the studio of his partner’s ex-husband, Arsen. He looks around his computer and finds something that changes his life. Arsen is an artist who creates fictional worlds into which he loses himself. The romance between reality and the imaginary begins. Dreams and fantasies are forever intertwined with life here and now.
1000 Dreams

In a remote Kyrgyz village, Beshkempir, an infant foundling, is taken in by five older women and later adopted by a couple unable to bear children of their own. Fast forward to his early teenage years, a pubescent Beshkempir is faced with all the problems of crushing on girls and courtship, reconciling with friends and dealing with death in the family. Above all he questions his place in the world as an adoptee.
The Adopted Son

To avoid severe punishment for desertion, a man hides in the mountains near his native village.
The Cry of a Migratory Bird

An urban drama. The story takes place in Kyrgyzstan during the first years of independence. Three brothers, Kubat, Sato and Kanat, inherit a greenhouse from their father. The oldest brother, Kubat, takes care of it. The youngest brother, Kanat, destroys it. The middle brother, Sato, is indifferent to the situation.
In Hope

In the village, in a small house by the river, an old man lives with his granddaughter. They live a simple life in harmony with the extensive nature. One day, the man’s daughter, living in the city and doing everything in order to survive in an hostile social environment, comes home and asks him to sell a house and move to live with her in the city.
The Move

A fable on perpetual motion in nature and the transfer of experience across generations.
A Prayer for the Holy Bird
One day in the life of a boy who wishes he could make an ancestral human dream come true and fly. With a machine he has made himself and with the strength of his own muscles, he intends to overcome the force of gravity.
The Fly Up

There are revolutions and disorder in the country. However, an old man doesn't leave his motherland as many others and continues his lonely life.
Sol

As his city faces the threat of being conquered by an evil lord, a brave boy decides to take matters in his own hands.