-
CAPRICCI PRESENTS
A FILM BY EMIR BAIGAZIN
T H E W O U N D E D A N G E L · A F I L M B Y E M I R B A I G A
Z I N · A K A Z A K H F I L M , J S C P R O D U C T I O N · I N C O
P R O D U C T I O N W I T H C A P R I C C I P R O D U C T I O N A N
D A U G E N S C H E I N F I L M P R O D U K T I O N · W I T H T H E
S U P P O R T O F A R T E F R A N C E C I N E M A , A I D E A U X C
I N E M A S D U M O N D E , C N C , M I N I S T E R E D E S A F F A
I R E S E T R A N G E R E S E T D U D E V E L O P P E M E N T I N T
E R N A T I O N A L , I N S T I T U T F R A N Ç A I S , R E G I O N
D E S P A Y S D E L A L O I R E , D O H A F I L M I N S T I T U T
EF I L M - U N D M E D I E N S T I F T U N G N R W , V I S I O N S
U D E S T A N D H U B E R T B A L S F U N D · I N C O O P E R A T I
O N W I T H T H E P O S T R E P U B L I C · T H E W O U N D E D A N
G E L a a f i l m b y E M I R B A I G A Z I N w i t h N U R L Y B E
K S A K T A G A N O V · M A -D I Y A R A R I P B A Y · M A D I Y A
R N A Z A R O V · O M A R A D I L O V · A N Z A R A B A R L Y K O V
A · T I M U R A I D A R B E K O V · K A N A G A T T A S K A R A E V
· R A S U L V I L Y A M O V · D O P : Y V E S C A P E · P R O D U C
T I O N D E S I G N : S E R G E Y K O P Y L O V · C O S -T U M E D
E S I G N : K A M I L L A K U R M A N B E K O V A · E D I T O R : E
M I R B A I G A Z I N · S O U N D D E S I G N & M I X I N G : M
A R K U S K R O H N · P R O D U C E R : A N N A V I L G E L M I · C
O - P R O D U C E R S : T H I E R R Y L O U N A S , J O N A S K A T
Z E N S T E I N , M A X I -M I L I A N L E O · E X E C U T I V E P
R O D U C E R : B E I B I T M U S L I M O V · A S S O C I A T E P R
O D U C E R : A L E X C H U N G · S C R I P T & D I R E C T O R
: E M I R B A I G A Z I N · F A C E B O O K P A G E : T H E W O U N
D E D A N G E L · W W W . E M I R B A I G A Z I N . C O M
-
KAZAKHSTAN, FRANCE, GERMANY 112’ – 2016 – COLOR – DCP
www.capricci-international.com
SALES & FESTIVAL PIERRE BOIVIN
[email protected] — +33 (5) 35 54 51 89
A FILM BY EMIR BAIGAZIN
-
Mid-90s in Kazakhstan, a time of a deep economical crisis…
Zharas carries bags of flour to feed his family. His father just
got out of prison and can’t find a job, so he’s on his own to allow
his family to survive.
Chick has a wonderful voice and prepares to take part in a
singing contest. But someday, new friends appear in his life.
Toad is hanging out in the ruins and sewers of his village,
looking for metal scraps he could resell. One day he encounters
three deranged young boys, the Gluesniffers, who show him a hidden
treasure in an abandoned plant.
Aslan is a brilliant student who gets ready to enter a medical
college in the city, but finds out that his girlfriend got pregnant
unexpectedly. Realizing the hopelessness of the conditions in the
village, he decides to assist her to have an abortion.
Four moral tales, four destinies of teenagers who will burn
their wings to find a place in the miserable and tough climate of
the real world.
SYNOPSIS
-
The Wounded Angel is the second part of a trilogy. Why did you
choose to focus it on teenagers and their coming of age?
Adolescence is actually not the central subject of my trilogy,
and it's not an autobiographical work. Adolescence is simply the
filter through which I can focus on moral dilemmas and internal
conflicts, in the most clear and sensible way possible. The inner
self of a 13 years old works like a magnifying glass. Each of the
characters of the film could take over this sentence from Lord of
the Flies by William Golding: « Since no one will come for us and
we’ll have to live here forever, then we can no longer live as
children ». The Wounded Angel is a film about the loss of
innocence. Something was broken inside the conscience of these
teenagers, and a new set of values emerges from it.
The Wounded Angel is, first and foremost, a painting by Hugo
Simberg. How did it influence your own work?
When I started working on the film, I was suffering from
depression. I read a lot, almost anything that came to hand,
including some books about art history and ethics. During the
editing of Harmony Lessons, I had already imagined the four stories
of The Wounded Angel. So when I stumbled upond some reproductions
of works by Hugo Simberg, which I knew already, I felt less alone
in my research. To my eyes, the eponymous painting by Simberg was
the culmination, the epitome of what I was trying to do with these
four stories. To put it differently, each of my character could be
this angel that the children carry in the painting. Additionally, I
used the Garland of Life, the fresco by Simberg with can be seen in
the Tampere Cathedral in Finland. It shows 13 boys as apostles, who
carry a tree of life. That's where the pictures at the end of each
part come from, when the title of the chapter appears.
INTERVIEW WITH EMIR BAIGAZIN
-
How did you choose this four-stories structure for the film?
I didn’t want to connect the stories and characters with each
other, it seemed like the easy way to artificially show the the
unity of the film to the spectator. I prefered to build the unity
of the story at a more subtle, emotional level, by developing
relations between the emotions. I didn’t want the film to be
reduced to a linear story, I wanted it to renew itself in the
movement from one story to the other. The last of the four stories
acts like a verdict, or a solution to the ones that come before
it.
The four characters seem doomed to commit something wrong. Is
this "fall" somehow linked to the state of the country?
Each of my four characters have to face a moral dilemma… However
the important part does not reside in the choice, but in their
realization that the choice was a mistake. The period in which The
Wounded Angel takes places, the 1990s, was a time of terrible
crisis for Kazakhstan: electricity was switched off regularly,
orphanages were overpopulated, crime happened in the streets all
the time... Criminal leglislation became the norm for everyone. So
for me it was the most efficient frame to work on the themes I
wanted to explore with The Wounded Angel.
-
Born in 1984 in Alga Province in Kazakhstan, Emir Baigazin
studied at the Kazakh National Academy of Arts in Almaty, with the
specialty of film direction and cinema. In 2007, he studied in the
Asian Film Academy at the Busan International Film Festival led by
Thai director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang and Iranian filmmaker Mohsen
Makhmalbaf. In February 2008, he participated in the Berlinale
Talent Campus at the 58th Berlinale. His debut feature Harmony
Lessons celebrated its premiere in the Berlinale Competition 2013,
where it won a Silver Bear for an Outstanding Artistic
Contribution. Among over 20 other recognitions worldwide, Emir
Baigazin was awarded at the Tribeca, Sao Paolo and Seattle Film
Festivals. His new long feature, The Wounded Angel, was supported
by the Berlinale Residency 2013 and has won the International Arte
Prize during the Berlinale Co-Production Market 2014. In August
2014 the project was awarded with the Work-in-Progress Prize at the
Sarajevo Film Festival. The film premiered at Berlinale 2016 in the
Panorama Specials section.
BIOGRAPHY & FILMOGRAPYEMIR BAIGAZIN
2016 — THE WOUNDED ANGEL (112')PANORAMA — Berlin 2016
2013 — HARMONY LESSONS (113')SILVER BEAR — Berlin 2013
GRAND PRIX - LICORNE D’OR
& PRIX D’INTERPRÉTATION MASCULINE — Amiens
2013
SPECIAL MENTION — Tribeca 2013
BEST FILM — Seattle 2013
GRAND PRIX — Sao-Paulo 2013
BEST FIRST FILM & BEST PICTURE —
Philadelphia 2013
NETPAC PRIZE — Abu Dhabi 2013
NETPAC PRIZE — Warsaw 2013
SPECIAL MENTION — Gent 2013
SPECIAL JURY PRIZE — Tokyo 2013
SPECIAL MENTION FOR DIRECTING —
Asian Pacific Screen Awards 2013
OFFICIAL SELECTION —
Karlovy Vary, Sarajevo, San Sebastian,
Busan & Nantes 2013
COMPETITION — Angers & Annonay 2014
2009 — JEAN’S VIDEO DIARY (28') 2008 — FATSHEDDER (20')
-
Original title Ranenyy Angel
International title The Wounded Angel
Director & editor Emir Baigazin
Director of photography Yves Cape
Sound Markus Krohn
Sound design Benjamin Hörbe
Production designer Sergey Kopylov
Costume designer Kamilla Kurmanbekova
Costume assistant Dana Agileulova
1st Director assistant Damir Tanatov Anna Vilgelmi
Director assistants Eldar Alpysbaev Aynura Sembieva Inzhu
Zhamalidenova
Camera assistants Sylvain Zambelli Kairat Temirgaliev
Make-up Alevtina Pagina
Casting Damir Tanatov, Almas Azhabaev, Asan Kirkabakov, Baltabek
Nurgaliev
2016 - Kazakhstan, France, Germany - 112'
Nurlybek Saktaganov
— Jaras
Madiyar Aripbay
— Chick
Madiyar Nazarov
— Toad
Omar Adilov
— Aslan
Anzara Barlykova
— Rosa
Timur Aidarbekov, Kanagat Taskaraev, Rasul Vilyamov
— The Wounded Angels
TECHNICAL SHEET
Production director Marlen Abishev
Producers Anna Vilgelmi Beibit Muslimov
Co-producers Thierry Lounas Jonas Katzenstein Maximiliano
Leo
Production KazakhFilm Studios JSC (Kazakhstan) Capricci
Production (France) Augenschein Filmproduktion (Allemagne)
With the participation of Arte France Cinéma, Cinémas du Monde,
CNC, Ministère des affaires étrangères, Institut Français, Région
des Pays de la Loire
With the support of Visions Sud Est with the Swiss Agency for
Development and Cooperation, The Hubert Bals Fund of the Rotterdam
International Film Festival
Distribution & sales Capricci Films
