Tulpan

Tulpan was Kazakhstan's 2009 Academy Awards official submission to Foreign Language Film category, but it didn't make the final shortlist.

[1] Asa, a recently discharged Russian Navy sailor, is living in the remote Kazakhstan steppe with his sister Samal, her older husband, Ondas, and their three children.

Samal, who played Asa's sister and the mother of the children, was the only professional actress on set having worked on stage in the theatre, however at the time of filming she was only nineteen years old.

The three children were able to rehearse scenes to different degrees with the exception of Nurzhigit Zhapabayev, the little boy who played Nuka, who Dvortsevoy simply "let loose" to be as wild and natural as one of the "animals".

The website's critical consensus states, "Kazakh sheep herders get their cinematic due in this lovely, unsentimental debut from director Sergei Dvortsevoy".