’Mukagali’: exclusive first trailer for Kazakh poet biopic playing in Tallinn Black Nights

Screen can exclusively reveal the first trailer for Mukagali, the latest film from Kazakh director Bolat Kalymbetov, which will have its world premiere in competition at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival on Saturday, November 20. The film is a biopic of Kazakh poet Mukagali Makataev, who since his death in 1976 has become one of the country’s most celebrated writers. The film concentrates on three years of his life when he left university after Leonid Brezhnev’s rise to lead the Soviet Union; Makataev opposed communism and worked to preserve the independent Kazakh language.