Erlan Bazhanov

Nagima

Ugly, illiterate and an uncommunicative “graduate” of the city orphanage, Nagima is a young woman whose life offers little potential for success or even happiness. Nagima rents a tiny room on the outskirts of the city of Almaty with her fellow orphanage “graduate” the pregnant, and equally isolated, Anya. In the midst of giving birth to her child, tragedy strikes and Anya dies. Never knowing her mother, the newborn girl must be submitted to the orphanage and so Nagima sees the vicious cycle of life in repetitious action and becomes severely depressed at the cruelty of life.

Losing Innocence in Alma-Ata

The film contains 13 different short stories about the first sexual experience. This is a mosaic of various feelings, emotions, joys and sufferings of young and not so young heroes. Our heroes are looking for and finding their love in different places: at students' classes, at the workplace, at the club, they get acquainted through their parents. They all crave a real relationship, but not everyone gets what they want.