Director and screenwriter, he was born in Kazakhstan, 1958, and was acclaimed by Jean-Luc Godard as "one of the most astonishing filmmakers working today", Darezhan Omirbayev studied Applied Mathematics in Kazakhstan, later embracing cinema when moving to Russia in 1983. After a brief foray into film criticism, he directed Kairat, his first feature-film, in 1991, earning the FIPRESCI Prize at the Locarno Film Festival. Endowed with an outstanding sensibility to detail, Omirbayev is able to portray, in every social microcosm that composes his work, the monotony of everyday life in Kazakhstan and the little nothings that define human existence.
