As it unspooled over five days from 11-15 June, the Bishkek International Film Festival offered an intense and varied programme that was carefully tailored to cater to both regional filmmakers and international guests. The organisers managed to bring together an impressive number of leading names from the industry, striking a delicate balance between European and Asian representatives but also proving accommodating of unexpected destinations: indeed, one of the jury members arrived from Cuba.

During its third edition, the Bishkek International Film Festival announced some important new partnerships. For the first time, FIPRESCI (the International Federation of Film Critics) presented a prestigious award in the regional competition. The film critics' prize went to a Kyrgyz debut fiction film, Mergen by Chingiz Narynov, which also won the Grand Prix of the Central Asian competition jury (see the news).

The festival offered a rare chance to discover cinema that rarely makes it to the festival circuit. The regional competition was composed of films from Kazakhstan (unarguably a key driving force in Central Asian cinema and the most familiar country for European audiences), Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

The new competitive section at the third edition was Kyrgyz Box, where the audience had a chance to revisit the most successful local productions that have already won the recognition of viewers and set new national box-office records.

Another important activity was CAF Pitch, where Central Asian filmmakers introduced their projects in development to international experts. This year, in addition to the main award of 300,000 Kyrgyz soms (approximately €2,980) given to the project Asyrandy, from Kyrgyzstan, the Kazakh project Memory Road received a special prize of $3,500 from the Red Sea Fund.

The festival offered free tickets to anyone who wanted to immerse themselves in cinema. One of the most impressive aspects was the astounding attendance levels for Kyrgyz productions. Every screening required the addition of extra seats, and people were eagerly sitting on stairs to share in the delight of watching local premieres. As film critic Sultan Usuvaliev put it, there is an “inexplicable, unconditional love for local films engraved deep in the Kyrgyz audience”. After the screenings, viewers not only asked questions, but also emotionally expressed their impressions and shared personal stories, as they reflected on the films they’d seen.

It is worth mentioning that the overwhelming majority of Central Asian films touched upon the topic of women in the patriarchal society. Domestic violence, victim shaming, intergenerational and gender misunderstanding, and miscommunication were some of the motifs explored by the directors. Another distinctive feature was the variety of genres tackled, which included horror – a kind of movie that is not selected so often for festivals (aside from specialised ones, of course).

Bishkek is a city that enables an inspiring array of bonus activities to be enjoyed outside the festival. On the last day of the gathering, the guests were taken to the Ala Archa National Park, a breathtaking natural gem nestled on the slopes of the Tian Shan mountain range. This experience offered an invaluable opportunity to take a breather after the intense few days of the festival, and to mingle in an informal manner.

The Bishkek International Film Festival is not afraid to make its ambitions known: it intends to become the most important platform for Central Asian filmmakers. At its third edition, it showed consistent growth and progress towards this goal. With the event’s trademark “sky carpet” walk and Snow Leopard mascot (a tribute to the unforgettable Tolomush Okeyev film The Descendant of the Snow Leopard, from 1985), the Bishkek team shows promising ambition, which will hopefully benefit from increased stability in the country.

A young and inspiring spirit permeates the atmosphere of this festival, and the rapid implementation of new initiatives can only make this destination, as yet unexplored by so many people, increasingly attractive.