The film-opening of the XIV Kazan International Muslim Film Festival will be a picture from Kyrgyzstan "Sayakbai. Homer of the 20th century"

The film "Sayakbai. Homer of the 20th Century "directed by Ernest Abdyzhaparov will open a film festival in Kazan. The show is organized on three sites at 21.00 in the Riviera, the cinema "Mir" and after the opening ceremony at the "Pyramid". The world premiere of the film took place on August 31, 2017 at the International Montreal Film Festival, where the film was awarded the "Best Innovative Film" prize. Later, the film became a prize-winner of film festivals in New York ("Best camera work") and London ("Best editing").

The film is dedicated to the life and work of Sayakbay Karalayev, the greatest narrator of the epic Manas (the largest Kirghiz epic named after its hero, Manas is included in the list of masterpieces of UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage of humanity, and also in the Guinness Book of Records as the most voluminous epic in the world).

Annotation: 1957 year. Still unknown to anyone, Chingiz Aitmatov, being a student of a literary institute in Moscow, comes on vacation to the great narrator of the epic Manas, Sayakbai Karalaev, in order to understand what this grandiose legend is about. A few days of communication with the elderly manaschi not only immerse the future writer in the spiritual culture of the Kyrgyz people, but also help to find patrons who will accompany him on the way to world glory ... It is interesting that the role of Chingiz Aitmatov in the film was played by his son Eldar Aitmatov.

The picture "Sayakbai" was chosen as a film-opening not by accident. The tape is devoted to the episode of the life of the outstanding writer Chingiz Aitmatov, the 90th anniversary of his birth is widely celebrated in Russia and the CIS countries this year. And although Aitmatov in this movie on the secondary roles, and the hero is the glorified manaschi Sayakbai Karalayev, there is a motive of succession of generations, the connection of cultures: traditional and modern, from "Manas" to Aitmatov. Thus, a new foreshortening of the "dialogue of cultures" announced in the slogan of the Kazan Film Festival along with the high artistic qualities of the tape became decisive factors in its choice as a  film-discovery. A positive response was found by the representatives of the DUM RT and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Tatarstan.