The Busan International Film Festival has long been fertile ground for the discovery of talented Kazakh filmmakers, and it can now lay claim to unearthing the Central Asian country’s latest star. And perhaps its oldest too, as Gingerbread for her Dad is anchored by Lyabiba Sermukhmedova, a twinkly-eyed, sharp-tongued 85-year-old with an incredible back story to tell. Her documentary-making granddaughter Alina Mustafina’s first feature deploys the octogenarian’s life, along with her own and her mother’s, to dissect a number of paradoxes in Kazakhstan’s history and national identity.
At the beginning of Gingerbread for her Dad, Alina Mustafina readily admits she is a walking cultural contradiction. Born and raised in Kazakhstan, she speaks Russian (and three other languages) but not Kazakh; once based in Qatar, she now lives in a new pyramid-shaped wooden house totally unlike that of her neighbours in Almaty. Her story can’t hold a torch to her grandmother’s, though: born in Tatarstan and relocated to Kazakhstan when she was young, Lyabiba was a Communist model-worker in the 1980s, a record-releasing singer in the 1990s, and now a pious Muslim who never leaves the house without her headscarf and her Quran.
Mustafina’s first feature-length documentary slowly unveils Lyabiba’s very eventful life, framed by the director fulfilling one of the old woman’s lifelong wishes: to find the burial ground of her own father, who died somewhere in a forest in Poland as a Red Army soldier during the final days of the Second World War. Starting off in the Kazakh capital of Almaty and ending in a clearing in the woods near the Polish-Belarussian border (after a stopover in Lyabiba’s native Tatarstan), Gingerbread for her Dad offers heartfelt, real-life family drama spiced with acerbic humour and numerous insights into Kazakh national identity as seen through three generations of a family.
Made with grants from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Korea, plus $15,000 Mustafina raised through her Instagram blog, Gingerbread for her Dad defies its modest budget with rich, flowing imagery. Alexey Elagin’s camerawork evokes both the ambitious nature of the trio’s “grand tour”, and the delicate nature of the mother-daughter relationships between the three women. The film well demonstrates former journalist Mustafina’s ability to pursue a story and capture the details of people’s interaction. More festival travel is indicated.
The seemingly corny title actually stems from a tragic episode in Sermukhmedova’s childhood. While just a small girl near the end of WW2, military cadres came to her home with news that little Lyabiba’s father had been killed in action, thousands of miles away in the west. To show their condolences, they brought the family some sweets – a luxury at wartime. “I ran around and shouted, ‘My dad is dead, we’ve got gingerbread cookies’,’” the old woman tells her daughter and granddaughter, as she looks back at her naive younger self with bemusement and guilt.
Grandmother’s contradictory emotions chime with Mustafina’s anxieties about her own cultural roots. The director laments her inability to speak Kazakh – she speaks Russian, which remains a lingua franca in her country – as well as her need to learn her prayers all over again as a full-grown adult.
Mustafina’s idea of bringing granny to Poland is initially rebuffed by her mother Alissa, who sees this journey as a salute to empty heroism, validating the questionable notion of people dying for their nation. As someone who attained adulthood at the same time as Kazakhstan attained its independence, Alissa casts doubt on “our ancestors dying in someone else’s war”. The chasm between their views on belonging is also reflected in their responses towards Mustafina’s question about where their “place of power” is. The roots-searching director Alina says Kazakhstan; her mom Alissa says, “in myself.” At which Lyabiba quips: “Are we done already?”
And so these exchanges go, as they fly first to Tatarstan, where Lyabiba revisits her birthplace and her memories through the letters and photos at her relatives’ home, before moving on to Poland. The trip offers closure to the three women, while the journey itself gives them a chance to open up and reconcile suppressed angst and long-forgotten tristesse about the different ordeals in their lives.
While Gingerbread for her Dad is very personal, it is never self-indulgent. The director, who is seen and heard throughout, has somehow transformed her presence – and also her mother’s and grandmother’s – into a vessel through which she projects something more profound than her own self. This is a chronicle of three women from three different generations in a country that is still in the midst of accounting for its past, present and future place in the world.
Director, screenplay: Alina Mustafina
Cast: Alina Mustafina, Lyabiba Sermukhmedova, Alissa Mustafina
Producers: Yerkezhan Maksut, Akzhol-bi Sarsembayev
Cinematography: Alexey Elagin
Editing: Valentina Bek, Aidan Serik
Music: Akmaral Mergen
Sound design: Dmitry Vasilev
Production company: UVENT Production
Venue: Busan International Film Festival (Wide Angle Documentary Competition)
In Russian, Kazakh, Tatar, Polish
76 minutes
