Almaty, our days. Sophomore Aldiyar finds out that he is being expelled from the university, and in order to prevent this from happening, he must find a large sum for restoration in a short time. Fearing that his strict father will find out about the deduction, he decides to earn the necessary amount and gets a job as a courier for a synthetic drug store. Aldiyar successfully distributes drugs and gets into the taste, forgetting about his goal. With the appearance of money, a dream girl and a dishonest policeman pay attention to him.
Acting
Azat Zhumadil's devastating slow collapse
Direction
Zholdaskali turns Almaty into a suffocating character
Cinematography
Bleached daylight and neon nights of urban Kazakhstan
Director
Aitore Zholdaskali
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Sheker emerged from Kazakhstan's new wave of social realist cinema, using genre trappings to examine systemic rot in post-independence institutions.
The 160-minute runtime mirrors Aldiyar's entrapment — you feel the minutes accumulate like debt he can't escape.
KZ
