''Waiting for the Sea'' (; ) is a 2012 film by

Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov ( Russian/, ) (May 29, 1965 – April 21, 2015) was a film director, producer and screenwriter from Tajikistan, a graduate of the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography. His most internationally famous film is the comedy '' ...

with collaboration from

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

, and

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

. The film is set in the backdrop of the dried-up

Aral Sea The Aral Sea () was an endorheic lake lying between Kazakhstan to its north and Uzbekistan to its south, which began shrinking in the 1960s and had largely dried up into desert by the 2010s. It was in the Aktobe and Kyzylorda regions of Kazakhst ...

and addresses the impact of the ecological catastrophe on the fate of the people in that region. It is the last part of the

Central Asia Central Asia is a region of Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as all have names ending with the Persian language, Pers ...

trilogy that Khudojnazarov had planned, which started with his 1999 film '' Luna Papa''. The second part of the trilogy, a tragicomedy named "Living Fish" (') after a screenplay by Oleg Antonov, had been projected since the year 2000, but was never completed as a result of the financial crisis in 2008 and the deaths of producer Karl Baumgartner in 2014 and Khudojnazarov in 2015. ''Waiting for the Sea'' was in the works in 2009.

Plot summary

From the port town of Abasta (which resembles Mo‘ynoq) at the southern shore of the

, Captain Marat sets off on a fishing trip despite a storm warning, since on this day an extraordinary amount of fish comes into the bay. After some hesitation, he takes his wife Dari along but sends her younger sister Tamara home. The ship sinks in the storm, leaving Marat the sole survivor. Ten years later, Marat is released from prison and returns to the town only to find that the sea has gone. The sea is now far away, and the port's pier rises into a vast sand desert with rusted ships. Town people treat Marat with hostility for the loss of their relatives during the naval accident. None of the missing crew members was ever found. Tortured by feelings of guilt, Marat starts to drag his ship with his own muscles in search of the sea. Only his old friend Balthazar stands by him. Tamara, the younger sister of his drowned wife Dari, loved Marat from her childhood and is now desperately trying to win his heart; Marat insists that Dari is his wife and tells her that he has "ashes in his heart". He only lives on for his quest of searching the sea, believing that if he finds the sea, he would also see his crew and his beloved wife Dari again, because "the sea doesn't kill. It returns what it takes". In the end, Marat dies of sickness and exhaustion. The perspective now changes into the soul of Marat: In a storm the sea returns and takes Marat on his ship out in the open, accompanied by the revelation of John 21:1.

Cast

* Egor Beroev as Marat. * Sayora Safary as Marat's wife *Anastasiya Mikulchina as Dari / Tamara. * Detlev Buck as Balthazar. * Dinmukhamet Akhimov as Dari's and Tamara's father. *Radzhab Khuseynov as Marduni. *Pavel Priluchnyy as Yasan. *Daulet Kekelbayev as Kvidak.

Filming locations

The film was shot in Kazakhstan on the

Mangyshlak Peninsula Mangyshlak or Mangghyshlaq Peninsula (; ) is a large peninsula located in western Kazakhstan. It borders on the Caspian Sea in the west and with the Buzachi Peninsula, a marshy sub-feature of the main peninsula, in the northeast. The Tyuleniy Ar ...

in the mountainous deserts of the

Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, described as the List of lakes by area, world's largest lake and usually referred to as a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, ...

and near the old port of Aktau. The film set of Abasta is still present at 104 km north of Aktau near Tauchik (at N 44 ° 24.112 E51 ° 34.076) and is an excursion destination.

Reception

Xan Brooks of

theguardian.com ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

rated it 3/5 stars and wrote, "Khudojnazarov's film is a big, broad, magical-realist folk tale, infested with too many crude archetypes (object of beauty, wise old hermit, roustabout best mate) to properly convince as human drama. But if the acid test of an international film festival is its ability to show us places we never knew existed, to transport us to other worlds and unfamiliar cultures, then ''Waiting for the Sea'' must count as a roaring success."

External links

*
The movie about the movie "Waiting for the sea" (Youtube)

References

{{reflist 2012 films 2010s Russian films 2010s Russian-language films Russian fantasy drama films Films shot in Kazakhstan Kazakhstani drama films Films directed by Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov 2010s fantasy drama films 2010s Belgian films