International Premiere

The film Red Pomegranate (Kyzyl Anar) directed by @sharipa_urazbayeva will be showcased at film festivals in Japan and Spain. 

March 10 marked the start of one of the largest Asian film festivals, Osaka Asian Film Festival, in Osaka, Japan. Director Sharipa Urazbayeva's film was among the world's top 15 films selected for the Most Promising Talent category. A total of 76 films will be presented at the Osaka Film Festival in 2022, including 24 world premieres and 13 international films.

Later in the fall, the film will be presented at the 21st Imagineindia Film Festival in Madrid, Spain.

In 2021, it was included in the main competition section of the 26th Busan film festival in South Korea where it was nominated for the New Currents category. 

Red Pomegranate tells the story of a woman who survives domestic violence and seeks justice. Urazbayeva says "this is not just another social drama, but a poetic film where real history is intertwined with a parable."

Urazbayeva is a graduate of the Kazakh National Academy of Arts. She directed and wrote the script for the Red Pomegranate, which is her second film up to date. She is currently filming her third.

Championing women's stories

Earlier Sharipa Urazbayeva was awarded as the best female director for her first film Mariam at the 22nd International Rainbow Film Festival in London.  

Mariam is another story centered around the plight of a Kazakh woman this time a mother of four children, abandoned in the steppe during winter after her husband disappears. Her two works so far aim to raise social awareness of the hardships and domestic abuse that women experience but are pressured to keep quiet about.

 In an interview, she commented on her gravitation towards producing works centered around women with tragic fates. 

As a woman myself, I really want to help those women. If not us, who will be able to understand and sympathize with us? In our country, if there are films made about women, they are shot from the male perspective. But a man cannot fully understand a woman's soul." 

Later on, she added that as she continues to build her career as an esteemed director, she hopes to show that female directors are fully capable of being as successful and skilled as male film directors.

Urazbayeva is currently filming her third project, which will follow the story of a young girl as she overcomes hardships in her journey to adulthood.