THE MOVING PICTURE BOY ARCHIVE

BESHKEMPIR

Title: Beshkempir
Anglophone title: Beshkempir the Adopted Son
Year of release: 1998
Director: Aktan Arym Kubat (also known as Aktan Abdykalykov)
Screenwriters: Aktan Arym Kubat, Avtandil Adikulov, and Marat Sarulu
Country of Production: Kyrgyzstan
Genre: Coming-of-age
Length: 1 hour, 17 minutes
Language: Kyrgyz
Availability: A DVD with English subtitles is available. The film can also be viewed on Youtube here.
Principal boy: Mirlan Abdykalykov, the son of the director, plays the title role.

Synopsis
A coming-of-age film about a boy growing up in a Kyrgyz village, the film is based very much on the director's own boyhood growing up in an adoptive family. The name of the protagonist, Beshkempir, literally means "five grandmothers", and is sometimes bestowed on an adopted boy to signify a sort of council of old women who decide when a superfluous child from one family can be bestowed on a couple who are infertile. Beshkempir himself is not told about his real parentage until one day after a fight with his best friend the latter taunts him for being adopted. When he asks his grandmother about this, he is told that it is not the case, and that the name Beshkempir was bestowed on him simply to protect him from the evil eye. Eventually, however, he has to learn the truth.

One aspect of this movie that makes it so excellent is the easy acceptance of the sexuality of Beshkempir and his friends, who are shown spying on a naked woman, humping a sculpture of a woman made in the sand, and even play-humping each other; very far from many coming-of-age movies in the West in which sexuality sometimes doesn't figure at all.

Right: movie programme including comment on the film by its director. Click on image for full programme (text in German, PDF opens in new tab, from Editor's film collection). Click here to view the PDF with the text translated into English by AI.

Screenshots