Already known to the Locarno Film Festival, where she won the Pardino d’Argento in 2020 for her short film History of Civilization, promising Kazakh director Zhannat Alshanova is returning to Locarno this year to present her debut feature film Becoming, which is selected in the Filmmakers of the Present competition. The film is set in her homeland, which is a relatively young country (independent for a little over thirty years) and which still seems, just like its protagonist, to be in a state of transformation, trapped between the rigours of the past and the need to reinvent its own future.

At the heart of the story is Mila (played by Tamiris Zhangazinova), a rather solitary seventeen-year-old girl who’s contending with an often-absent mother (Assel Kaliyeva) who seems to be stuck in the throes of an ongoing teenage crisis, and a little sister who’s addicted to video games and who’s had to learn to raise herself. The two sisters have everything they need materially speaking (their grandfather worked for the Home Office), but emotionally things are far more complicated. A lack of structure and stability caused by the fluctuating moods of her mother, who’s more interested in her boyfriend abroad than her daughters’ needs, forces Mila to get by as best she can. And, as we know, freedom can be difficult to manage at seventeen. A substitute family, however, comes in the form of the swimming team which she joins during a trip to an unspecified health resort. Hanging out with her teammates but, primarily, charming and enigmatic swimming coach Vlad (Valentin Novopolskij), Mila gradually realises just how much she needs to belong to the team and to feel like part of a group.

Individually speaking, the film’s characters are well constructed, but sometimes their real motives escape us, leaving viewers confused over certain narrative decisions. Undoubtedly interesting to explore, the world of swimming, and in particular the open water swimming which Mila enjoys, sometimes feels secondary, as if it could be replaced with any other team sport without fundamentally changing the film’s meaning. Even Mila’s true nature - the motivating factors behind her unexpected behaviour - aren’t entirely clear, as if the confusion which inhabits her prevents us from accessing her personality. Between competitions in moonscape lakes, the sudden death of a teammate, her ambiguous relationship with her coach, doping and the desire to succeed at all costs which drives Mila on, the audience is at increasing risk of losing its way in the meanders of a story which is as aesthetically charming as it is hard to follow.

Without a doubt, the film’s strength is its mise en scene and Caroline Champetier’s photography in particular. The deep and mysterious waters in which Mila and her friends swim seems to enhance their angst, drawing them into their fears. And it’s this, more than any of Mila’s concrete actions, which reveals just how intrusive her dark side really is, and the all-consuming nature of her need to belong to something or someone.

Becoming was produced by Films de Force Majeure (France), Accidental Films (Kazakhstan), Volya Films (Netherlands), M-Films (Lithuania) and Kjellson & Wik (Sweden).