Steppenwolf

West Coast Premiere

Official Selection, 2024 International Film Festival Rotterdam
Golden Raven, 2024 Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film
Outstanding Performance, 2024 Fantasia Film Festival

A man with a cigarette in his mouth, a sack over his head, and cuffs on his hands is both cop and criminal, protector and killer. And in the apocalyptic wasteland of warring factions and endless collateral damage, his mercenary allegiance to nobody is his best asset. In the shuffle of a shootout, he meets Tamara, a distraught mother looking for a son who has gone missing. Helping her can allow him to make a getaway and deliver sweet revenge against a terrorizing crime boss.

Their road is cold, brutal, and grisly. It’s familiar ground for the western, and STEPPENWOLF wears its tribute to John Ford on its bloodied sleeve. But this is director Adilkhan Yerzhanov (The Owners, SDAFF ’14) at the helm, so it’s also strangely, sickeningly funny, with long-take sight gags and dead-pan murder, a façade of bleak humor hiding an anguished soul hanging on for dear life. Like Mad Max as directed by Aki Kaurismäki, or The Last of Us as a post-Soviet art film, STEPPENWOLF is stylish pastiche in the desert, a dusty cinematic sandpit for one of Kazakhstan’s most visionary filmmakers.

– Brian Hu