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‘Steppenwolf’ Director on How Hermann Hesse, John Ford, Samurai Stories Inspired Violent Kazakh Film, Teaser Debuts, Next Project Revealed (EXCLUSIVE)
'Steppenwolf' is inspired by Hermann Hesse’s eponymous novel, John Ford’s The Searchers,' Howard Hawks’ 'Red River' and Samurai films.
There is a certain inevitability about a film inspired by Hermann Hesse’s novel “Steppenwolf,” first published in German in 1927, and two famous Westerns of the 1950s — John Ford’s “The Searchers,” and Howard Hawks’ “Red River.” In acclaimed Kazakh director Adilkhan Yerzhanov ’s latest film — also called “Steppenwolf” — two characters who are essentially loners existing outside of the usual moral boundaries of the world come together united in a common task: to save a small boy who has gone missing. The nods to classic Westerns are immediately obvious to those with even a passing acquaintance with the genre: a lone figure framed in a doorway, shot from behind, looking out onto a landscape of flat scrublands; the casual violence meted out to the amoral inhabitants of this stark world.
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