Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #100953 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-10-03
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Black & White, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Subtitled, NTSC
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 81 minutes

From the Back Cover
Beshkempir is an exquisitely composed and photographed child-to-man tale of a Kyrgyz villager. Beshkempir is just like any other kid - playing in mud, getting into trouble, experiencing the first pangs of sexuality - until a fight with his best friend leads to the revelation that he was adopted. What sounds like a clichi takes on striking resonance here in a mostly pre-industrial society where the daily rituals are so earth-based that Beshkempir's request for money to see a movie comes across as an anachronism. Shot in gorgeous black and white, the film explodes into occasional bursts of color. Beshkempir, The Adopted Son is a rare poetic treat.

Customer Reviews

Fascinating!
Great visual imagery of a story about an adopted boy in a small Kyrgystani village. The kids play with him and a girl is willing to be attracted to him until it is revealed he is adopted. He then becomes somewhat of an outcast until some issues are resolved and a tragedy happens. A very moving story done in black and white and in color. I was really interested in the how life is conducted in the village, the work of the adults and the play of the children. It is fascinating and a really good showcase for a culture most Americans know little about. My spell checker couldn't even recognize the spelling of the country! Recommended.

Glimpse of an unfamiliar culture
This film succeeds because of the simple earthiness of the village where the story takes place. The plot itself is quite familiar, the typical coming of age. The fact that this boy has been adopted and doesn't realize it gives a twist here. One also emphasizes with the father who feels that he must be tougher than he would be even on a natural born son.

There's a natural poetry here. The pace is slow, quite slow, but not tiresome. It's shorter than the typical American feature movie, and so the pace doesn't hurt the movie.

It is in black and white, although with occasional and startling bursts of color. Hey, they don't make pictures like this here in America!

Interesting film, something of a curiosity
A minimalist film from Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian nation and former Soviet republic (there are several alternative spellings of the country). Shot in black and white, but with a few scenes in color, the film is set on a rural village and starts as a young baby boy is adopted by another family. The film cuts to several years later, when the boy is now a teenager. With other boys he is shown having the small adventures that boys in small towns have, stealing fruits from a neighbor, fighting, splashing in a mud pool, going with the rest of the village to an outdoor cinema (where an Indian film is shown, using an old projector). The central conflict of the movie starts when other boy, after losing against him the favor of one of the girls, tells him he is an adopted boy (which is apparently a cause for shame in the local culture). This small conflict will eventually reach a happy resolution, when his parents (which had hide to him his origins) tell him the truth. The movie is well done, in the tradition of the slow Soviet art movies, though it would be a stretch to call it a masterpiece. But because the country and its culture are little known outside the former Soviet Union, most of the viewers will see the film with the thrill of discovery, as a portrayal of a strange, unknown culture.