{"id":49961,"date":"2026-10-29T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/?p=49961"},"modified":"2026-10-21T13:00:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T11:00:17","slug":"olga-korotko-crickets-its-your-turn-kazakhstan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/culture-sports\/olga-korotko-crickets-its-your-turn-kazakhstan\/","title":{"rendered":"Olga Korotko: \u201cThe film is a comedy in its construction and a tragedy in its outcome\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"flex flex-col md:flex-row justify-evenly items-center bg-yellow-100 my-20 p-10 space-y-10 subscribe\">\n\t<div class=\"container flex flex-col lg:flex-row justify-between\">\n\t\t<div class=\"flex flex-col w-full lg:w-3\/5 pb-4\">\n\t\t\t<h2 class=\"text-3xl text-secondary font-bold mb-4 text-[#749D02]\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSupport Novastan, the European Central Asia magazine \n\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\tBy supporting Novastan, you are supporting the only English, French and German-language media specialising in Central Asia. We&#8217;re independent and we need your help to stay that way! \n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"flex flex-col w-full lg:w-2\/5 justify-items-center justify-center pb-4\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"rounded-md bg-accent-500 px-10 py-5 text-center w-72 mx-auto\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a class=\"block rounded bg-white p-2 mt-4 font-bold\" href=\"https:\/\/donorbox.org\/soutenir-novastan?language=fr\">Support Novastan<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em><em>In her unsettling feature film Crickets, It&#8217;s Your Turn, Kazakh filmmaker Olga Korotko explores gender-based violence, complicity and the structures of power that allow abuse to flourish. Ahead of the film&#8217;s screening at the Asian Film Festival Barcelona, she speaks to Novastan about the strength of creativity, the disturbing absurdity of violence, and why her story extends far beyond Kazakhstan.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A young photographer, Merey, accepts an invitation to a gathering at a secluded house in the mountains outside Almaty. What begins as an ordinary social encounter gradually descends into a disturbing confrontation with male aggression, conformity and violence. As the night unfolds, the boundaries between reality and Merey&#8217;s imagination become increasingly blurred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Written and directed by Kazakh filmmaker <strong>Olga Korotko<\/strong>, <em>Crickets, It&#8217;s Your Turn<\/em> (2024) combines psychological tension, absurdist humour and theatrical imagery to examine not only those who perpetrate violence, but also those who enable it through silence, conformity or indifference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Read more on Novastan<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/kazakhstan\/kristina-mikhailova-river-dreams-kazakhstan\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/kazakhstan\/kristina-mikhailova-river-dreams-kazakhstan\/\">\u201cRiver Dreams\u201d: A river, 100 women and a portrait of Kazakhstan<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the centre of the film is Merey, played by Inzhu Abeu, whose creativity and perception of the world stand in sharp contrast to the hierarchies of power that govern the men around her. Rather than offering a conventional story of victimhood or revenge, Korotko challenges audiences to reconsider what constitutes strength, how violence becomes normalised and why punishing individual perpetrators does not necessarily dismantle the systems that sustain them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Based in the United Arab Emirates since 2019, Korotko continues to engage with Kazakh society through her filmmaking while drawing inspiration from experiences beyond national borders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ahead of the film&#8217;s Spanish premiere at the Asian Film Festival Barcelona on 30 October, Novastan spoke with Korotko about the ideas behind the film, the significance of its striking visual language and the questions she hopes audiences will continue asking long after the credits roll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"717\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-official-poster-717x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-49970\" srcset=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-official-poster-717x1024.jpg 717w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-official-poster-1075x1536.jpg 1075w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-official-poster-768x1097.jpg 768w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-official-poster-210x300.jpg 210w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-official-poster.jpg 1100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 717px) 100vw, 717px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Olga Korotko uses absurdity and black humour to expose the unsettling relationship between ridicule and violence.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Novastan: Crickets, It&#8217;s Your Turn is deeply disturbing, not only because of the violence itself, but because of how the different characters react &#8211; or fail to react &#8211; to it. Some participate, others remain passive, and almost nobody intervenes. Was this collective indifference something you particularly wanted to explore? What interested you about the responsibility of those who witness violence but choose not to act?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Olga Korotko:<\/strong> I wanted to show not simply the aggressors, but the system they stand on. An aggressor does not emerge or act in a vacuum. There has to be a certain ground on which his worldview can develop, his values can be reinforced and his actions can become acceptable. That ground is not always part of the conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think society sets a very high threshold for what it is prepared to recognise as unacceptable violence. Below that threshold, a great deal is treated as insignificant: nothing serious, he was only joking, he was just being persistent in his courtship. But even once that threshold has been crossed, accountability is far from guaranteed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Moreover, society often takes sides before it even begins to examine what happened. What matters is who is standing before us: a man or a woman, from what background and class, with what education and reputation. A white man from a privileged background may be given the benefit of the doubt in advance, while a woman has to prove that she deserves to be heard at all. Judging the person takes the place of examining what they did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The image of the pyramid of violence is useful to me here. At the top are its most extreme forms, including femicide. But that visible peak rests on a broad foundation of things considered harmless: sexist jokes, stereotypes, degrading comments, the habit of not taking women seriously. Then come control, harassment and coercion. This does not mean that every joke inevitably leads to a crime. It is about an environment in which disrespect and domination gradually become normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I tried to make different levels of this system visible. Even the taxi driver, who sees Merey taking photographs and immediately starts teaching her how to do it, exists within this system. He knows nothing about her professional experience, but never questions his own right to instruct her. The system is already present in the most ordinary situations, long before the viewer encounters brutality. It is also there in the cinema scene, where the film being screened presents harassment as romantic courtship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So for me, the question of why people do not intervene begins before the act of violence itself. When boundaries are constantly blurred, when so much has already been justified and normalised, people struggle to acknowledge the point at which something must be stopped. And sometimes acknowledging it would mean questioning their own behaviour too. Everyone occupies a place in this system and contributes to sustaining it: through open aggression, silence, conformity or a willingness to excuse one of their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Crimes must be punished. But it also matters to me that we become less tolerant of things dismissed as trivial that create the ground for those crimes. We cannot keep dealing only with the top of the pyramid of violence while leaving the foundation from which it grows untouched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Read more on Novastan<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/kazakhstan\/the-wife-the-short-film-highlighting-domestic-violence-in-kazakhstan\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/kazakhstan\/the-wife-the-short-film-highlighting-domestic-violence-in-kazakhstan\/\">The Wife: the short film highlighting domestic violence in Kazakhstan<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">One of the most unsettling aspects of the film is Merey&#8217;s absolute isolation. Even those who initially appear sympathetic or trustworthy ultimately offer her little protection. Did you deliberately construct a world in which she has nobody to rely on? What does this absence of solidarity tell us about the society you wanted to portray?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I would first clarify something: I do not see Merey as absolutely alone. There is a difference between a lack of support and the way a person builds their relationship with the world. People have different inner architectures. Merey has a very rich inner life, and she does not feel a particular need to build a large social circle around herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think the most alive moment of connection in the whole film is between her and the women at the party, when she photographs them. She sees what is alive and real in them, and through her photographs they have the opportunity to see themselves through different eyes. Not through the male gaze they are subjected to at this party, but through the gaze of someone who is interested in them as people in their own right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Merey is an artist, and much of her communication with the world happens through what she creates. She photographs these women, and later they look at the photographs. That is communication. It does not end the moment people are no longer in the same place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is very personal for me. I do not have a large crowd around me either, and communicating through what I create is, for me, a full and meaningful way of communicating with the world. Creativity does not necessarily happen instead of relationships. It is itself a form of relationship. In fact, I consider it one of the strongest forms of relationship, one that exists beyond the limits of time and space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What interested me in the film was a clash between two ways of existing. The men in the film build their world through force, domination and hierarchy. For Merey, life is grounded in beauty, play and creativity. She is not an outcast who has failed to find a place in their group. She is not a weak person among strong people. She has an entirely different understanding of what strength is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the men explains the world through his own version of Darwinism: the strong defeat the weak. Merey speaks about beauty. This is where the image of the peacock comes in. For me, it stands against that primitive formula of life reduced to the ability to attack, dominate or hide. There is also creativity, creation and the continuation of life. Merey does not need to subjugate someone else for her presence in the world to matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I do not see her as a naive idealist. I think she is the freest and most inwardly strong figure in the film. The very idea that beauty, play and creativity are weak, unimportant or dispensable is bound up with gender assumptions. These things are assigned to the feminine and then devalued. For me, real strength lies precisely in creativity, rather than in domination and physical force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To judge Merey by her ability to dominate is already to accept the criteria of the men in the film. If a viewer recognises strength only where someone can subjugate another person or defeat them physically, they risk reproducing the very logic the film examines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Her strength is therefore shown through a concrete action: through her gaze, other women see themselves differently. Beauty here is neither decoration nor a comforting refuge. It has an effect on another person. And I did not make her a photographer by accident. A camera can turn a woman into an object to be judged and enjoyed by others. Merey uses that instrument to see a woman. To give her presence and individuality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The absence of protection is part of the society depicted. But I did not build the character around the question of why nobody comes to her aid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"540\" src=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-merey-photography-1024x540.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-49967\" srcset=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-merey-photography-1024x540.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-merey-photography-768x405.jpg 768w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-merey-photography-300x158.jpg 300w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-merey-photography-1536x810.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-merey-photography.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Photography plays a central role in Merey&#8217;s relationship with the world in <em>Crickets, It&#8217;s Your Turn<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The house in the mountains almost feels like a society in miniature, cut off from the outside world and governed by its own rules. As the night progresses, it becomes increasingly nightmarish. What inspired this setting, and did you intend the house to represent something larger than the immediate situation of the characters?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yes, the house is a society in miniature. But to my mind, any social situation is already a society in miniature. A bus journey, a school lesson, an ordinary encounter. Ideas about what is acceptable, about power, about one&#8217;s own place and that of others, emerge everywhere. People bring society with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The isolation mattered to me for a different reason. Merey is acutely sensitive to injustice. But at the beginning of the film, she does not directly confront the men she encounters. She has her own way of dealing with what happens: the white room, her inner theatre. There, she transforms situations, mocks them and works through the sense of injustice they provoke. This is an action on her part too; it simply takes place in another space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Once she is in the mountain house, she initially continues to use this approach. But gradually it becomes insufficient. It is one thing to privately mock a taxi driver who tells you how to use a camera, and then get out of the car. It is another to encounter violence while isolated with the people who pose the threat. Here, she cannot simply end an unpleasant conversation and carry on with her day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In other circumstances, she would still have at least some outside options: leaving, seeking help, going to the police. I do not want to pretend that these guarantee a woman&#8217;s protection. But in the house she is deprived even of those fragile possibilities. She has to intervene directly in what is happening. This does not mean that outside the house she would walk past violence, merely mocking it to herself. Isolation sharply restricts the ways she can act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The space creates conditions in which her usual way of engaging with reality reaches its limit. Her ability to create images remains; what changes is the relationship between those images and the outside world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This change takes place in the form of the film itself. The white room ceases to be a separate space she can enter inwardly. Her fantasies seep into the external action, and the boundary between them and reality becomes increasingly unstable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What matters to me is that these fantasies never existed apart from reality in the first place. From the beginning, they grow out of particular encounters, conversations and humiliations, out of what Merey notices and experiences. At first, the film allows us to perceive these spaces separately, and then makes their inseparability visible. I do not see this as a story in which the protagonist simply loses touch with reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The men in the film are not all equally aggressive, yet they seem to reinforce one another&#8217;s behaviour. Nurlan, in particular, appears concerned with being accepted by the group. How important was it for you to explore male conformity, peer pressure and the fear of challenging other men?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I would distinguish between fear of the group and the desire to belong to it. Nurlan does not simply need to avoid punishment from the men. Being accepted by the powerful is a reward for him, confirmation of his place in the world. He is afraid of ending up among those who can be oppressed, because he himself accepts this arrangement of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Within this worldview, a person can seek to subjugate someone less protected while willingly submitting to someone whose authority over them they recognise. There is no contradiction here. These are two sides of the same hierarchy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You can see this in the most ordinary situations. A man is being loud and aggressive, ignoring a woman&#8217;s requests to stop. But as soon as another man intervenes, someone he perceives as stronger or more influential, his ability to control himself suddenly appears. So it is not necessarily a question of being unable to control himself, but of whose demand he considers binding. Even such simple actions sustain the larger system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nurlan does not have to want to dominate everyone: it is enough to want to belong to those who dominate. If he sees no possibility of reaching the top himself, he seeks safety through proximity to those already there. To gain their recognition, to be on their side. He can only imagine the other side as the place of those who will be oppressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is why such characters matter to me. An openly aggressive person is easier to recognise, although recognising his cruelty does not mean being able to stop him. But someone who appears decent and says reasonable things inspires trust. We want to see in him the possibility of a different response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yet outward civility is no guarantee of moral resistance. The person who speaks more gently than the others may be the one through whom the system successfully continues to operate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Moreover, I do not think Nurlan understands his own betrayal. His idea of what is normal has already been shaped by this hierarchy. I do not see him as someone who has understood everything, identified what is happening as evil and consciously chosen to support it. What disturbs me more is that someone can think of himself as perfectly decent while continuing to participate in cruelty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Control is often explained as care: a woman must be restricted because she is supposedly being protected; decisions must be made for her because she does not understand what is best for her. Someone can sincerely consider this position reasonable and caring without recognising that it justifies control. He does not have to be pretending. He believes he is right and never questions his right to decide for another person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For me, this raises the distinction between decency as a social image and decency as an action. You can use the right words and be pleasant company. But what remains of that decency when you have to give up the approval of people whose recognition matters so much to you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I see a connection between patriarchy, capitalist relations and political power in precisely this logic: the strong are granted the right to determine another person&#8217;s life, and safety is sought through proximity to power. This is the lens I bring to the film as its author. The scale may vary: relationships within a group, economic dependence, political alliances. But the same way of thinking recurs: to avoid being oppressed, you need to be close to those who oppress. Nurlan sustains this system without even considering himself one of its cruel participants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"540\" src=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-men-conformity-1024x540.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-49968\" srcset=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-men-conformity-1024x540.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-men-conformity-1536x810.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-men-conformity-300x158.jpg 300w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-men-conformity-768x405.jpg 768w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-men-conformity.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A surreal scene from <em>Crickets, It&#8217;s Your Turn<\/em>, a film exploring conformity, power and the normalisation of violence.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The film combines moments of absurdity and dark humour with deeply disturbing events. At times, the characters&#8217; almost casual behaviour makes the violence even more unsettling. How did you approach this balance, and what can black humour communicate about violence that a more conventional drama might not?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Humour was one of the film&#8217;s central artistic choices. Freud&#8217;s essay \u201cHumour\u201d had a strong effect on me when I read it, particularly his discussion of the ego&#8217;s refusal to submit to the suffering imposed by reality. I am drawn to an understanding of humour as an inner, spiritual victory over a situation. For me, the ability to make a joke is connected to being able to rise a little above what is happening, to see connections and contradictions that may be invisible from within the experience. A position outside it becomes possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was not enough for me to evoke sadness and sympathy about violence against women and the impunity surrounding it. I value emotions very much: they are often how we first notice injustice. But I wanted to go further and examine how it works. That violence is terrible and wrong is, for me, the starting point of the conversation. If someone does not understand that, I have bad news for them. I wanted to go further, to create an analytical lens. Humour gave me the distance I needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I also wanted to strip aggressors of their grandeur. In cinema, violence is often surrounded by mythology: the person committing it turns out to be extraordinarily intelligent, powerful, almost superhuman. This fascination with the aggressor irritates me. He is credited with depth and exceptional qualities that he does not necessarily possess. Very superficial reasoning begins to look like complex philosophy simply because a dangerous person is speaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By creating this mythology, we ourselves give him additional power over our imagination. I wanted to tear off that mask of grandeur. But humour does not make the men in my film harmless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We are used to expecting that once a claim to greatness has been exposed, it will lose its power. Here, however, a person can be ridiculous, superficial, pathetic, and still dangerous. There is a terrifying gap between how little he amounts to and how much harm he can cause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So black humour does not release the tension here. On the contrary, it makes what is happening even more disturbing. You see how absurd these people are, but their power over the situation remains. The ability to cause harm requires neither depth nor intelligence nor any exceptional qualities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The film is a comedy in its construction and a tragedy in its outcome. Even the title refers to the silence after a joke that turns out not to be funny: nobody laughs, all you hear is crickets. The film itself is built like that kind of joke. You see caricature and absurdity, you recognise what is funny, but behind it all is a tragedy. And at a certain point, there is absolutely nothing to laugh at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"540\" src=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-black-humour-bear-1024x540.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-49969\" srcset=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-black-humour-bear-1024x540.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-black-humour-bear-1536x810.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-black-humour-bear-768x405.jpg 768w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-black-humour-bear-300x158.jpg 300w, https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/10\/crickets-black-humour-bear.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Olga Korotko uses absurdity and black humour to expose the unsettling relationship between ridicule and violence.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Although the film is fictional, its portrayal of violence, silence and impunity inevitably raises questions about contemporary Kazakhstan. To what extent were the characters and their reactions inspired by attitudes or situations you have observed in Kazakh society? Kazakhstan strengthened its legislation against domestic violence in 2024, but implementing legal protections is another matter. From your perspective, have attitudes and institutional responses genuinely begun to change?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I always find it a little funny when my film is read as something that happens only in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is the setting, but I never intended to confine what I was saying to a single country. I am speaking about something that exists all over the world: openly in some places, elsewhere in forms that are easier to overlook or consider acceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think reading it as a story about a \u201cdistant society\u201d sometimes allows the viewer to maintain a comfortable distance. We watch how terribly life is organised somewhere over there and can fail to notice familiar relationships in our own surroundings. But I would like people to see their own world in the film too. The geography of these relationships extends far beyond Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Right now, we are following the case of Jane Doe, who reported being gang-raped at a Cornell University fraternity house. The investigation is ongoing. But the history of the response to her report already raises serious questions. Initially, no criminal charges were brought. The university measures reported included assignments to write essays; there were also expulsions and suspensions. Simply listing disciplinary measures does not answer the question of whether the woman received protection or whether there was proportionate accountability. The criminal investigation was reopened only after a civil lawsuit and widespread public outcry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A prestigious institution, education and existing rules do not in themselves rule out either violence or a failure to respond to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Changes in the law matter, of course. But the environment in which a law is meant to operate must allow it to function. The existence of legal protection does not in itself guarantee that someone can access it; the law is applied within the very social relationships I am examining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A formal prohibition on violence can coexist with distrust of the victim, excuses for the aggressor and the protection of a group&#8217;s or institution&#8217;s reputation. Someone has to decide whether a woman is credible, whether what happened to her is serious enough, whether it is worth disrupting the established order for her. Those decisions reveal assumptions about whose life and whose future matter more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I would not want to turn this conversation into an assessment of how particular legislative changes are being implemented in Kazakhstan. That is a separate task for people who work professionally on these issues. As a filmmaker, I am interested in what lies beneath the formal prohibition: why violence continues to be justified and whose interests take precedence over protecting a person. I want to make visible the relationships that can prevent even existing mechanisms of protection from working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Without revealing the ending, the film raises uncomfortable questions about justice, revenge and whether it is possible to escape cycles of violence. What did you want audiences to feel or question when leaving the cinema?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For me, it is important to distinguish between justice and the satisfaction of a story settling the score with the abusers. Taking revenge on particular aggressors can bring a story to an end without changing what made their actions possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I consciously rejected an ending in which Merey takes justice into her own hands and seeks revenge. These people must be held accountable. But if the environment itself remains unchanged, punishing individuals does not resolve the problem. It continues to produce new aggressors. I think of the image of the hydra: a severed head grows back because the source of its existence has not been destroyed. The environment must change too, so that it shapes different relationships and different people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Revenge in cinema can also give the viewer a powerful sense of release. The abusers have been punished, we have experienced retribution alongside the heroine, the story has symbolically restored order. We can breathe out: it is over, the situation has been resolved. I did not want the viewer&#8217;s relief to be the film&#8217;s final word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have a background and professional experience in psychology, and this also informs how I think about cinema. I am interested in what happens to the viewer&#8217;s experience after the final frame. Here, I wanted to leave a sense of something unresolved, so that people could argue, think, talk and return to what they had seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Punishment does not undo what happened or bring back what was destroyed. It matters to me to preserve that sense of irreparable loss. In reality, many victims are denied even the symbolic restoration of order that cinema can so readily offer. I can bring the plot to an end, but I do not want to present that ending as a resolution of the conflict itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And Merey&#8217;s choice is essential here. If her strength ultimately has to be expressed only through her ability to destroy her opponents, we return to their definition of strength. She lives within a different system of values. What she creates, what she changes in other people, has a life of its own in the world. But I do not want to turn that into a convenient compensation, as though beauty could cancel out the harm inflicted on someone. It cannot. The significance of what has been created and the injustice can exist simultaneously, and one does not resolve the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I refuse to fulfil cinema&#8217;s familiar promise of symbolically restoring order. I wanted to create an artistic situation that viewers could enter into conflict with for themselves. For the story to end and the question to remain open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">You have been based in the UAE since 2019 while maintaining close connections with Kazakhstan. How has living there influenced your perspective on Kazakh society and your filmmaking? Has the UAE also played a role in the film&#8217;s production or creative development, and do you see opportunities for stronger cinematic cooperation between the UAE and Central Asia?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is difficult for me to trace every influence on my own work from within my own experience. But I cannot identify a specific influence of living in the Emirates on the artistic conception of Crickets. The UAE was not involved in producing the film either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I tend to start with my own inner processes, with how I experience what is happening. A story grows out of an emotional response. So I sometimes find it difficult to answer questions about creativity through the borders between countries: they do not quite correspond to how I experience my life and work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sometimes I feel as though I live in every country at once. In Kazakhstan, in the Emirates, all over the world. I can be deeply affected by what is happening in France, Kazakhstan or Ukraine. You only have to open your phone and you are already inside events taking place far away, but provoking very real pain and anxiety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course, watching through a screen and living through events directly are different experiences. But my attention and emotional life are not confined to the country where I am physically present. So I find it difficult to describe distance from Kazakhstan simply as either a creative advantage or a loss. I do not feel that I have left one world and now exist exclusively in another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the same time, I want to shoot my next film right here, in the Emirates. And in that case, I can say very specifically how a place influenced its conception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Read more on Novastan<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/kazakhstan\/rinat-bekchintaev-almaty-paris-central-asian-cinema\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/kazakhstan\/rinat-bekchintaev-almaty-paris-central-asian-cinema\/\">Rinat Bekchintaev: \u201cAlmaty has an authentic cinematic image that cannot be repeated anywhere else\u201d<\/a><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">About two years ago, I went to Fujairah for the first time. I had already been living in the UAE for several years, but had never been there. That trip literally turned my world upside down. The nature, the landscape, the beauty of the emirate made such a strong impression on me that I immediately thought of the spaces in Michelangelo Antonioni&#8217;s films. I looked around and thought: how have I never seen this before? This has to be in cinema.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was a very immediate feeling of inner exhilaration, a desire to create something out of what I was feeling at that moment. That experience gave rise to the idea for the screenplay I am working on. I think it will be very different from my first two films.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Read more on Novastan<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/kazakhstan\/almira-saifullina-karlag-memory-kazakhstan\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/kazakhstan\/almira-saifullina-karlag-memory-kazakhstan\/\">Almira Saifullina: \u201cThe steppe is an archive of violence, memory and silence\u201d<\/a><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Simply living in a country does not yet give me a subject. But encountering a particular space can provoke a response from which an entire film grows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As for cooperation between the UAE and Central Asia, I would not venture to assess its production and financial conditions at this point. But I do feel a certain cultural affinity and closeness in outlook. I feel that people could find a common language, that there is ground here for mutual understanding. I would be interested to see what films might emerge from such an encounter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right wp-block-paragraph\">By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan English.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Crickets, It&#8217;s Your Turn, Kazakh filmmaker Olga Korotko explores gender-based violence, complicity and the structures of power that sustain them. Ahead of the film&#8217;s Spanish premiere in Barcelona, she speaks to Novastan about black humour, the strength of creativity and why her story extends far beyond Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":358,"featured_media":49966,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4670,4939,4],"tags":[623,5142,470],"coauthors":[358],"class_list":["post-49961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture-sports","category-interview","category-kazakhstan","tag-cinema","tag-crickets-its-your-turn","tag-kazakhstan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/358"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49961"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49972,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49961\/revisions\/49972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49961"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novastan.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=49961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}