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‘Bikechess’ Review: A Withheld Kazakh Comedy-Drama About State Propaganda
Winner of the international competition at the Tribeca Festival, Assel Aushakimova's 'Bikechess' follows a journalist with limited possibilities.
Nauruz plays Dina, a field reporter disillusioned with the manufactured slice-of-life stories she’s forced to cover and a woman who can’t quite find the right avenues to channel her professional drive. This illicit romance is depicted through a series of electric silences — the actors’ body language is explosive, especially when their characters are forced to be coy — but disappointingly little actually comes of this exciting throughline, for no other reason than their dynamic simply petering out seems like the most realistic possibility, given the circumstances of Dina’s job. Aushakimova and cinematographer Aidar Ospanov take an unobtrusive, almost documentarian approach to each scene, which works to capture reaction shots that comment on various ongoing government rigmaroles.
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