Qara Film Festival
The festival introduces its audience to strong documentary films from all over the world and develops initiatives aimed at supporting Central Asian documentary filmmakers.
By popularizing documentary cinema in Kazakhstan, QaraFest invites the viewers to observe the real stories of non-fictitious characters, perhaps to question previous beliefs, to reflect on the experience and to take something valuable from it.
The third edition of the festival was held in the summer of 2023 in the ARTiShock theater in Almaty. 11 feature films from Sweden, the Netherlands, Armenia, Ukraine, Poland, France, Kyrgyzstan, Hungary, India, Tajikistan, Denmark, Germany and Finland, were shown. In addition to the main program, for the first time in the history of the festival, a short film competition "Biz" was held. It included 8 strong Kazakh documentaries. Ratmir Nazirov's "Pink Seagulls" was selected as Best Film and awarded with 1000 euros! "Dina" by Yadykar Ibraimov and Jack Wolf received the Special Mention award!
We'd like to thank you for immersing yourselves into the magical world of documentary cinema with us during those five summer days. Thank you for watching the festival films, for bringing friends and loved ones with you. Thank you for your laughter and tears, and for sharing thoughts about the films afterwards. And thank you for your warm support of the local short films!
We hope that we will meet again and watch good documentary films together. 'Til next time, friends!
By popularizing documentary cinema in Kazakhstan, QaraFest invites the viewers to observe the real stories of non-fictitious characters, perhaps to question previous beliefs, to reflect on the experience and to take something valuable from it.
The third edition of the festival was held in the summer of 2023 in the ARTiShock theater in Almaty. 11 feature films from Sweden, the Netherlands, Armenia, Ukraine, Poland, France, Kyrgyzstan, Hungary, India, Tajikistan, Denmark, Germany and Finland, were shown. In addition to the main program, for the first time in the history of the festival, a short film competition "Biz" was held. It included 8 strong Kazakh documentaries. Ratmir Nazirov's "Pink Seagulls" was selected as Best Film and awarded with 1000 euros! "Dina" by Yadykar Ibraimov and Jack Wolf received the Special Mention award!
We'd like to thank you for immersing yourselves into the magical world of documentary cinema with us during those five summer days. Thank you for watching the festival films, for bringing friends and loved ones with you. Thank you for your laughter and tears, and for sharing thoughts about the films afterwards. And thank you for your warm support of the local short films!
We hope that we will meet again and watch good documentary films together. 'Til next time, friends!
is an independent documentary film festival launched in Kazakhstan in 2020
