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“It seems that we may be doing the most unpopular thing,” says Nargiz Shukenova, co-founder of the Central Asian Documentary Festival (CADF), trying not to laugh. “Unpopular region, unpopular genre.” Situated in Almaty, Kazakhstan, the festival, which recently celebrated a remarkably successful first edition, is an unlikely offshoot of an already somewhat unlikely proposition; and by all accounts “an experiment” too. The CADF runs a month after Clique, the other film festival that Shukenova runs with her colleague Boris Baykov, which brings high profile arthouse films such as Birdman or The House That Jack Built to Almaty, alongside select documentary programming and special events. The new venture, focused entirely on Central Asian documentary, represents something different both for its organisers, and for the region’s filmgoing audiences.”
Full report on the Central Asian Documentary Festival in Almaty, Kazakhstan on Sight & Sound