30. Film Festival della Lessinia
Bosco Chiesanuova (Italia)
23 August - 1 September 2024

"Men can cry, women can get angry." Eleven-year-old Jabai sells mountain onions along the highway. One day he catches his mother having sex with his truck-driver uncle who was his idol. So he departs with his sister Saniya from their village in Kazakhstan and goes to China in search of the "Golden Viagra", which will be able to save the "virility" of his father in the eyes of his mother. The divorce between husband and wife is narrated from the children's point of view, which is the same as that of a very young Shibanov who, following his parents' painful divorce realized that things change at disarming speed and that you can still be happy. With extravagant costumes, satirical dialogue, and the intelligence hidden in the demented traits, this remains an optimistic film, which teaches that first you have to listen to yourself and then to others. It not only shows us the life of a family, but of an entire society, of an unpredictable system, and of a mocking universe of points of view.

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  Eldar Shibanov

  Eldar Shibanov is a Kazakh independent director, screenwriter and producer, born in 1986. He graduated in Architecture at the Kazakh Leading Academy of Architecture and Civil Engineering, later specializing in cinema at the New York Film Academy.

  His film, Gornyi luk / Mountain Onion (2022), won recognition at the Venice Film Festival 2022 and at the Moscow International Film Festival. The short, Sex, Fear and Hamburgers (2018) received, among others, an award at the Venice Film Festival 2018.