Strawberry Princess, a short film by Iliyas Antar Akhmet won two awards at the Pápa International Historical Film Festival 2024 (PIHFF) held April 25–28 in Hungary, QazMonitor reports citing Andrey Manuylov, promotion producer at Alternativa filmmakers lab.
About the film: Strawberry Princess is a comedy-drama set in ‘91 Almaty on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union and tells the story of a boy named Galym. The 35-minute short won Best Short Film award. Kambar Nurgali won Best Actor award for his performance as Galym.
“This is Kazakhstan’s first participant in our program and, I can say, the brightest one! With the collapse of the USSR, the situation in the post-Soviet republics, as well as in Eastern Europe, developed differently, and in that sense, Strawberry Princess was especially interesting to us. In the context of those pivotal events that the people of Kazakhstan lived through... An extraordinary work performed at a high artistic level. I hope that in the future we will show films by other [Kazakh] filmmakers,”
About the fest: PIHFF 2024 featured films by directors from Germany, Spain, Greece, Bulgaria, the UK and other countries. The screenings took place at Mozi theater in the city of Pápa displaying feature films, documentaries, and experimental films.