The Land where Winds Stood Still

The early 1930’s. A small village in Central Kazakhstan.

Zhupar – a woman about 30 years of age, the mother of two children – a 4-year-old Boshai and a 6-year-old Zholan. Her husband – Asan – a man about 30 years of age – a horse thief, that steals in order to survive. One day Soviet authorities confiscate the village’s entire cattle herd. In an attempt to keep his livestock, Asan gets arrested and sent to Siberia, alongside several other villagers. Zhupar stays in the village with her children, expecting her husband to return. Meanwhile, the village slowly deteriorate – some people die of starvation, others abandon their homes and move to nearby towns in search of better life. Zhupar runs out of food – she decides to follow and find her husband – in order to feed herself and her children. Along the way, she encounters various people – a former village chief, who now also desperately seeks for food and shelter; an insane old woman, who predicts the extinction of the Kazakh nation; fugitive horse thieves, that got lost in the vast steppes; but most commonly she meets the starving folk, the ones, who’s willing to give up everything for a piece of bread. At some point Zhupar’s supplies become very limited – so she and her children weaken by the day. Soon she realizes that she can’t provide two children at once any longer and she has to make a choice – whether to feed one instead of two and abandon one of her sons so that the other one could live. This inhumane choice tortures her and almost drives her insane. It is unclear whether she can ever handle this life-altering choice and overcome these endless steppes of this vast land in search for her husband.