Toll Bar

Well-acted drama finds an aspiring boxer working as a parking valet, trying to provide for his teenage brother and himself despite encountering great hardships. When his part-time job as a bouncer ends badly, the aftermath sets off a chain of events that eventually lead both himself and the other main character (who's paradoxically trying to escape the trappings of his family's wealth and father's influence over his life) into ruin.

The outlook for the characters is bleak, and the film depicts a life of diametrical extremes with privilege and corruption bearing down on entrenched disadvantage and cultural discrimination, which offers no meaningful relief.

A few major plot holes aren't total deal breakers but they do leave more than a few unanswered questions that diminish the overall satisfaction with the film.

Well photographed, acted and technically competent, there's a seed of a decent film which just needed another twenty minutes and some deeper storylines to achieve success. Otherwise it's a grim but compelling short film which shows great promise for the future of Kazakh filmmaking.