Hash Import 2026 05 18 12 34

Qas (2022)

★★★★ — Qas (2022)

Qas (the title translates roughly as "Enemy") is a Kazakhstani historical drama produced through the small independent outfit QARA Studios, written and directed by Aisultan Seitov in what appears to be one of his earliest feature-length works. The film is set during the Holodomor-adjacent famine of the 1930s, a period in which Soviet collectivisation policies devastated the Kazakh steppe and killed a significant portion of the country's population, a chapter of history that remains underrepresented in world cinema. Shot on location across the Kazakh landscape, the production leans into its modest resources, prioritising atmosphere and performance over spectacle. Lead Yerkebulan Daiyrov had previously worked in Kazakhstani television before taking the central role here as the gravedigger Isatai.

A-Z World Movie Tour Kazakhstan Right from the fumirst intro scenes I was invested. I love movies with long shots of the wilderness and a lone rider. The bleakness of the area around the carriage rider and the accompanying intro score was fantastic. Set during the famine of the 1930s in Kazakhstan, even the colour scheme was starved. It was greys and beige and that's it and then by night it's only the orange glow of the campfire and the abyssal darkness all around. The story is about a gravedigger and his younger brother he's caring for and their journey to the apparent haven of Sarkand. On the journey they encounter a mysterious old hermit, with an aura of darkness surrounding him. This is where the film changes from a period drama into a psychological horror. The director is an absolute master at somehow making these huge expanses of plains feel claustrophobic. At every turn... the sinister old man is there. Menacing. Stalking. At times I was asking myself is he even there at all or is this hunger delirium? The contrast of the backdrop once they arrive in Sarkand, and the apparent futility of their efforts is an absolute gut punch. Brilliant movie. Will be watching more by this director if I can.

Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 2022 | Watched: 2025-07-04

View on Letterboxd →

Where to watch (UK)

Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Amazon Video
Buy: Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon UK

Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.

Related on Movies With Macca

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) arrived at a strange crossroads in American cinema: too modest to be a prestige picture, too unsettling to be a forgettable B-movie. Adapted from Jack Finney’s serialised novel The Body Snatchers and shot at Allied Artists on a budget barely

Fantastic Planet (1973)

René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet (1973) is one of those films that doesn’t really fit anywhere: too cerebral for kids, too odd for animation festivals, too steeped in European political theory for the Saturday-morning slot, and too visually fearless to ignore. A 72-minute French–Czech co-production designed by the

Viy (1967)

Viy (1967) is a strange and almost solitary object in Soviet cinema: a horror film, an actual horror film with monsters and demons and supernatural set-pieces, in a national cinema that mostly didn’t make horror at all. Officially endorsed by Mosfilm and based on a Nikolai Gogol folktale, it

Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (1951) is the studio’s middle-period work par excellence: technically polished, commercially tested, narratively cautious, and just slightly off. Made between two of Disney’s commercial successes (Cinderella in 1950, which had rescued the studio from one of its periodic financial near-misses, and Peter Pan

Read more

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Fantastic Planet (1973)

Viy (1967)

Alice in Wonderland (1951)