Luna Papa

Running time: 107 mins

Mamlakat loves Shakespeare, loves the theatre and wants to be an actress, but she lives in a small village isolated in an arid region of Central Asia, next to a large sea. So, why shouldn't this seventeen-year-old girl believe that the mysterious, handsome stranger is a friend of Tom Cruise? He wouldn't lie about such a thing. The next thing she knows, she is pregnant, desperate and on a quest to restore the family honor by finding the cowardly inseminator who seduced her. Father, daughter and Mamlakat's decidely "different" brother (wonderfully played by Moritz Bleibtrau--Manny in Run Lola Run) set out on a wild and fantastic trip through the landscapes of Central Asia in which tradition and superstition clash with the chaos of the post-modern world. Chulpan Khamatova (the beguiling female lead in Tuvalu) is delightfully perfect as Mamlakat, the perplexed mother to be, confronting miracles, wonders, joy, death and the unexpected as she searches for her child's father. Director Bakhtiar Khudojnazarov concocts an entertaining, profound saga of wondrous fantasy, which reels with exuberance, energy and a joy for life that is absolutely irresistible. Mixing the absurd and fantastic with the touching and tragic, Luna Papa is a wonderfully exciting experience not soon forgotten. Reviewed by Al Owens