When her father commits suicide, country girl Saltanat is forced to travel to the city in search of the money that will spare her mother from jail. Accompanied by her childhood friend (and ardent admirer) Kuandyk, Saltanat soon learns how wide the gap between her ideals and the reality of contemporary Kazakhstan truly is.

Dir/Scr ADILKHAN YERZHANOV, Kazakhstan’s king of the offbeat and the absurd, is at his lyrical best in this tale of innocence corrupted. Yerzhanov’s trademarks—⁠—exquisite tableaux, deadpan humour, and humanist heart—⁠—are coupled here with a meta-cinematic riff on the western, the noir, and French New Wave.