The Hunter (Okhotnik)

In an isolated village in the Kazakhstan mountains, Erken, a boy of twelve, lives with his beautiful and alluring single mother. Taciturn and sullen, the child is considered 'cold', like a 'wolf-child'. One night, when his mother is visited by a hunter, Erken steals the latter’s horse and his gun to hold up a shop. Sought by the police, he is found by the hunter who gives him a choice: to go to prison or to go and live with him in the mountains. Thus begins a voyage of initiation, in the course of which the hunter tries to pass on his taste for and understanding of life; to breathe a little 'warmth' into him, by awakening him to the beauties of nature and women, as well as of friendship and death. Moving between contemplation, action and comic interludes, Aprymov strikes just the right balance between the legendary, the epic, and a form of social realism particularly concerned with those on the fringes: 'child-wolf', hunter, shaman, easy woman. The director’s sympathies are with these individuals who know how to listen to their bodies, the Earth and its mysteries.