Official selection
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2024
Honors
Winner of the Golden Raven Grand Prix at the 2024 Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival.
Director
Adilkhan Yerzhanov
Producer
Aliya Mendygozhina, Alexander Rodnyansky
Writer
Adilkhan Yerzhanov
Cast
Anna Starchenko
contact
Blue Finch Film Releasing
“Nasty. Electrifying, ruthlessly tense… An uncompromising and harrowing experience”– Abdul Latif, FILM FEST REPORT
“Bleak, bloody, and bullet-riddled… A singular, stylized vision of action cinema”– Kevin Jagernauth, IONCINEMA
Brajyuk (Berik Aitzhanov, GOLIATH, THE ASSAULT) was once a detective. Today, he’s an interrogator. Bone-breaker. Mercenary. Above all, Brajyuk is a psychopath. We meet him during an eruption of horrific bloodshed between warring factions at a police station. His path soon crosses with that of a woman so consumed by trauma that she can now barely speak. Her name is Tamara (Anna Starchenko, NARTAI) and she’s desperately searching for her young son, Timka, gone missing in an apocalyptic Kazakh landscape consumed by riots and ultraviolence. Brajyuk has no sympathy for her, but an offer of payment brings him dispassionately onside. Together, they embark on a journey of death and tears.
A startling vision of hell from celebrated Kazakh maverick Adilkhan Yerzhanov (THE GENTLE INDIFFERENCE OF THE WORLD, THE OWNERS, Fantasia 2019 selection NIGHT GOD) and Oscar-nominated producer Alexander Rodnyansky (LEVIATHAN), STEPPENWOLF explodes off the screen with sustained tension that will singe the flesh off your bones. Like a Kazakh MAD MAX directed by John Ford (or perhaps, THE SEARCHERS directed by George Miller) on a binge of Herman Hesse and classic samurai tales, STEPPENWOLF reinvents the codes of its inspirations with chilling doses of post-Soviet nihilism and morbid black humour. Set in a dystopian world without moral boundaries, the film is nonetheless a moral vision, an anguished response to escalating horrors both next door and across the world in the guise of a neo-Western vengeance thriller. Returning Yerzhanov star Aitzhanov is a terrifying force of nature, bringing Brajyuk to life in a stunning performance that pulverizes with the darkest energy, an anti-hero turn of the most charismatic and frightening kind that ranks with Malcolm McDowell’s Alex in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. All set to a pulsing electronic score by Galymzhan Moldanazar that’s reminiscent of Tangerine Dream by way of Carpenter and Martinez. This is spectacular filmmaking. And one of the most bleakly disturbing action thrillers we’ve seen in years. It couldn’t be more timely. – Mitch Davis
Showings
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