Critic Reviews

In every respect, this unclassifiable movie is an amazing accomplishment.

If you see only one comic love story from Kazakhstan this year, choose this prize-winning honey.

Funny, fascinating, utterly unclassifiable film.

I swear to you that if you live in a place where this film is playing, it is the best film in town.

Might be described as an epic landscape film, a sweetly comic coming-of-age story or a lyrical work of social realism. But the setting -- a windswept, sparely populated steppe in southern Kazakhstan -- gives the movie a mood that sometimes feels closer to that of science fiction.

What makes Tulpan remarkable are the extended unbroken scenes, both dramatic and comic.

Polished, funny and utterly charming.

In the tradition of ethnographic dramas from "Nanook of the North" to "The Fast Runner," Tulpan drops us in the middle of a godforsaken nowhere and marvels at the people who live there.

The filmmaker's documentary training pays off in detail after detail.

A beautifully choreographed and photographed story about tradition and modernity in rural Asia.