CRITICS’ PICK! Might be described as an epic landscape film, a sweetly comic coming-of-age story or a lyrical work of social realism. The lamb birth scene… a milestone in cinematic ovine obstetrics, is both crucial to the story and a tour de force… a perfectly ordinary event that is also something of a miracle.”
– A.O. Scott, The New York Times
Click here to read Scott’s full review.

“(An) unlikely crowd-pleaser (TULPAN won the grand prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard), the most riveting sequence is also the most elemental… TULPAN has just about everything anyone could want in a movie. In a film packed with emotion, there is not a trace of sentimentality, perhaps because Dvortsevoy is a superb dialectician with a sense of humor that is both absurdist and tender. Punctuated by stunning tableaux of the windswept plains and primal images of domestic animals. A thrilling fusion of documentary and fiction. The takes are long and involve mind-boggling alignments of landscape, weather conditions, animals and humans. The editing – particularly the sound editing – is as expressive and rich with meaning as the unbroken moving images. “
– Amy Taubin, Artforum

“CRITICS’ PICK! Remarkable look at life among Kazakh shepherds mixes bizarre humor, quirky characters, and stunningly shot naturalism into a strange hybrid of narrative and documentary, full of transcendently beautiful moments.”
– Miranda Siegel, New York magazine

“ASTONISHING …a SPECTACULAR, unclassifiable immersion in the daily life
of nomad sheepherders working the awesome emptiness of the Kazakh steppe.”
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice

IN THE DIRECTOR’S OWN WORDS, TULPAN WAS SHOT “IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE,” IN SOUTHERN KAZAKHSTAN, in an area known as the Hunger Steppe, home to nomadic shepherds and their flocks. A young man returns from military service, to join his sister and her husband, and to court Tulpan, the area’s only marriageable young woman. Winner of the Cannes Festival Prix Un Certain Regard, TULPAN is part ethnographic drama, part astonishing wildlife movie. This arid, wind-swept terrain is home to lambs and camels, people who live in yurts, and a young woman who rejects her suitor with the excuse that his ears are too large. TULPAN is gloriously shot and compellingly acted; it will be a startling revelation to anyone who has not previously had the pleasure of seeing Dvortsevoy’s earlier films, HIGHWAY and PARADISE.

• Zeitgeist's TULPAN site

GERMANY / SWITZERLAND / KAZAKHSTAN / RUSSIA / POLAND • 2008 • 100 MINS.
IN KAZAKH & RUSSIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES • A ZEITGEIST FILMS RELEASE