Zhauzhürek myng bala

One of greatest movies I've ever watched, along with Brave Heart and Gladiator...Movie is about real life of Kazakh nation in XIX century, about war between Jongars and Kazakhs, about a dozen of young fellas, who were brave and brilliant enough to go and fight against army which was very powerful, about decisiveness shown by Kazakhs, which about to lose the war against stronger Jongars, stronger in terms of army and technology, but no stronger in terms of spirit and belief. I think this movie will be especially interesting and exciting for those, who loves historic movies, movies about heroic people and actions. I wrote thousand times Nomad, because I believe it is really better and better many many times than Nomad, which has budget 3 times Myn Bala's budget, but was shot by non-professionals.

Kazakhstan is fortunate in having a historical enemy to depict as bad guys without any concern for offending them, since the Dzungar Khanate went out of existence in the mid-18th century, not long after the events of this film. The exterminator of the Dzungar Khanate was of course Qing-dynasty China on their eastern front. That fact is barely mentioned in passing when Sultan Abilkhair points to his map and says the Dzungars have been cut off in the east. That was China making war on them. That Kazakhstan raised a rebel army strong enough to take on the western front in the Dzungar Wars is the stuff of epic legend. The scene right before the climactic battle has various divisions announcing their representation of all different parts of Kazakhstan. This is perfect for raising patriotic feeling over Kazakh history, while there are no remaining Dzungars to take offense at being shown as the unremittingly bad guys. What was then Dzungaria is now part of Xinjiang and is inhabited by Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Manchus, and Mongols as well as Chinese. It is at peace with independent Kazakhstan. This movie cast the Kazakhs in earth tones, mostly shades of brown, while the Dzungars are uniformly in black. The story is simple and easy to follow even without knowledge of this era of Kazakh history. A band of plucky teenagers becoming heroes of their nation. Go see it and feel good for Kazakhs.

This is how you do a movie . Young Kazakhs fighting for their independent against the Mongolian army.

Showing our history of our struggle to our independence.

Kazakhstan has gone through a lot of struggle, the Turks, the mongols, the Soviet. It's nice to see our struggle come to the movies.

Im kazakh.

Story in my personal opinion ia taled nicely, but not perfect. Actors are good, but not great. But when I reccolect tales of my granny, which were told by here granny, I undestand how hard was that time to live, and how brave were my ancestors. If you want to get invovlved in kazakh traditions and history, that film is very good as a point of a start.

P. S.

Film is to be watched in kazakh language to get it totally and in a right way. The thing is our language is a bit different from english, and hell lot stuff just theoretically can not be translated correctly to get all the info given in one ward. For example, in english you call horse as a horse, in kazakh language there are 47 different wards to say horse(describing its colour, manner of moving, age etc). And that is only about one word, and here we talk about a movie. As an interpreter who watched both english and original versions I would say that almost of 70% of meanings in key scence were lost!

this film was beautifully done in every way. good cast, good directing, good screenplay, good camera, good editing, beautiful locations and settings, good costumes and, very good music. i've never thought a movie out of a small central Asia country would be this good. the script was so well crafted that allowed the young heroes and heroines to freely perform with their hearts and spirits. this is a film that once you've watched it would always stay with you, the beautiful prairie, the remote snowy mountains, the horses, the galloping. the first viewer was right, this film is indeed much better than 'nomad', the fight scenes were especially good too.