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| Director Nurzhamal Karamoldoeva |
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| actress Malika Kanatova |
Only Heaven Knows (Dünüyö) B Kyrgyzstan USA (80 mi) 2025 d: Nurzhamal Karamoldoeva
Who knew that Chicago has the largest Kyrgyzstan community outside of Central Asia, much as it does the largest Polish community outside of Warsaw, so it’s perhaps appropriate for the director to make her first fictional film in that city. Immersed in the Kyrgyz culture, using a cast that features non-professional actors from the Kyrgyz and Central Asian diasporas, and real locations utilized by that community, including restaurants, health clinics, beauty salons, a trucking company, and apartments where Kyrgyz compatriots live, the film was shot in just 14 days by an international team from Kyrgyzstan and the United States. The director got her start making documentary films, with a commitment to showing reality without embellishment, and is currently a professor at the Department of Television, Cinema and Media Arts at the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan. Doing extensive research ahead of time, conducting dozens of interviews, the film is based on real stories of Kyrgyz migrants. The director acknowledged being influenced by two of the best chroniclers of our times in Jia Zhang-ke, specifically 2013 Top Ten List #3 A Touch of Sin (Tian zhu ding), which was itself an homage to King Hu’s A Touch of Zen (Xia nü) (1969), and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011), claiming specific scenes were created directly from those films. In an interesting side note, following the world premiere of her film just the night before at the Chicago Film Festival, she and a contingency of friends working on the film all went out to dinner at a nearby Kyrgyzstan restaurant to celebrate, and when the owner discovered who they were, he comped the entire meal and drinks for everyone, which she proudly acknowledges is what she loves about the Kyrgyz culture, as they traditionally welcome and support others in the disapora.
In what is essentially a patriarchal society, the film opens, appropriately enough, following Eric (Dauren Tashkenbaev), a married husband on a gambling spree, where the emotionally draining, toxicity of the experience is on full display until, surprisingly, he wins big, bringing home a giant wad of cash which he proudly shows off to his mother (Elmira Myrza), as if this is the embodiment of all their hopes and dreams, because finally they have enough money to make a down payment on a house, which is part of the migrant experience of assimilation and chasing the American Dream. In many ways this follows the same trajectory as the Lorraine Hansberry play A Raisin in the Sun, also taking place in Chicago, where a black family attempts to build a better world for themselves by improving their living situation in a new and better neighborhood. In each case, trouble ensues. Taking his mother and his wife Mira (Malika Kanatova) on a tour of what may end up as their new neighborhood, his mother is impressed, extremely proud of her son, as like so many that came before them, that house is a reflection of their family’s success in America. The director has something else in mind, however, offering a different perspective on this age-old experience. “It’s a coming-of-age story, but it’s also about home and the concept of it, which is so changing. Home is not really about the place, the country, the city. It’s not even about the people that surround you because you can feel lonely and out of your space. Ultimately, it’s about this feeling where you are at home with yourself. It’s like an internal journey.” With that in mind, things go off the rails when Eric gets in over his head and accumulates a massive gambling debt, liberally borrowing from everyone he knows, but never pays them back, some of whom run out of patience, so his day of reckoning is coming.
What starts out as Eric’s story merges into that of Mira, as her life is sent into turmoil after the disappearance of the down payment money and her husband, who fears for his life and flees from his creditors, having found himself in the deep abyss of an untenable situation. Exposed and vulnerable, the situation only deteriorates when their house is ransacked by one of the men looking for the missing money, taking all the money she had saved from working at a nail salon, leaving them in a dire predicament. Eric’s mother is completely unsympathetic, actually blaming Mira, who she never liked, believing she’s not good enough for her son, refusing to believe Eric had anything to do with this, instead directing her venom at Mira, actually throwing her out of the house, leaving her destitute and on her own. The heightened emotions of this scene are memorable, as it’s hard to forget, painting an indelible picture of the price of gambling debts, how it destroys families and decimates any existing stability, leaving them completely untethered and on their own. Mira is determined and resourceful as she attempts to track down her husband, discovering others are looking for him as well, finding herself in a myriad of turmoil and confusion, seeking help from those she knows, some of whom are helpful, even offering her money and a temporary place to stay, but ultimately this is a journey she must travel alone, needing to find the fortitude to survive. Forced to navigate complex immigration appointments, impending health issues, and interpersonal conflicts that flair up, she is the picture of inner resolve. Shot in a documentary, social realist style by Mitchell Arens, and written by Jeff Man and Guljan Toktogul, the director leaves the ending ambiguous, allowing viewers to decide for themselves what outlook they envision, with an open-ended finale that resembles a similar understated ending in Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces (1970).
