Synopsis

25-year-old John lives together with his adolescent brother Erbol and his 12-year-old sister Aliya, suffering from epilepsy, in Kazakhstan’s largest city Almaty. When they cannot afford the rent anymore, they are forced to leave their home. Fortunately, their deceased mother left them a house – unfortunately, the house is located in the middle of nowhere. Nevertheless, the siblings are willing to attempt a new beginning in their new old home. As if it couldn’t get any worse, a man occupies their house, stating that he has been living there for ten years. His name is Zhuba and he is a local drunk known for his strange nostalgia for the Soviet regime. In addition, his brother is a local police officer, and Zhuba thus self-assuredly refuses to move out. The siblings’ fight for their new home seems hopeless and soon takes on absurd dimensions… “Kafka meets Kaurismäki“, wrote The Hollywood Reporter about The Owners. And further: The tragicomic revenge drama of young director Adilkhan Yerzhanov criticises – riddled with a great deal of black humour – the country’s ruling social inequality and packs it dexterously into a poetically and surreally appearing pictorial context. The Owners was presented at the Cannes Film Festival and was received equally entusiastically by the audience and the critics.