Heiners Filmseiten – The Wounded Angel (en)

The Wounded Angel (Ranenyy angel)

Francaise title: L’Ange blessé
Russian title: Раненый ангел
Original title: Ranenyy angel

Alternative titles:
Raneny Angel | Ranenyy angel

Drama – Kazakhstan, Germany, France
Production year: 2015
Movie length: 113 minutes

Director: Emir Baigazin (Эмир Байгазин),
Writer: Emir Baigazin (Эмир Байгазин),
Cinematograph: Yves Capes

Movie description:

A godforsaken Kazakh village in the mid-1990s where four youths are trying to find their way in life. Zharas suffers because his father, an ex-con, cannot find a job. To help make ends meet the boy takes on casual work at a corn merchant’s. Balapan can sing »Ave Maria« as clear as a bell but his schoolmates provoke him into using his fists rather than his voice. Zhaba roams about the village ruins looking for waste metal he can sell. He comes across three bedraggled boys of his own age who have run away from a nearby home and are sleeping in a derelict tunnel. Aslan is about to take up studies in medicine but, after having persuaded his girlfriend to have an abortion, he undergoes a complete change in personality.

Four loosely connected stories set in a small town in Kazakhstan at the beginning of the 90s, a time of transition from the Soviet era to a new state inscribed with emotional and economic depression. Each of the four main characters, all of whom are 13 years old, must go through a painful transition themselves; this presents them with a moral dilemma. They turn from being children – or »angels« – to grown-ups, and are wounded along the way.

Mid-90s in Kazakhstan, a time of a deep economic crisis...
Zharas carries bags of flour to feed his family. His father just got out of prison and can’t find a job, so he’s on his own to allow his family to survive.
Chick has a wonderful voice and prepares to take part in a singing contest. But someday, new friends appear in his life. Toad is hanging out in the ruins and sewers of his village, looking for metal scraps he could resell. One day he encounters three deranged young boys, the Gluesniffers, who show him a hidden treasure in an abandoned plant. Aslan is a brilliant student who gets ready to enter a medical college in the city, but finds out that his girlfriend got pregnant unexpectedly. Realizing the hopelessness of the conditions in the village, he decides to assist her to have an abortion...
Four moral tales, four destinies of teenagers who will burn their wings to find a place and survive in a poor village of Kazakhstan: Balapan, a victim of bullying who doesn’t want to fight; Zharas, whose father is a thief and has to feed his family; Zhaba, who searches for some metal scraps and lusts after a secret treasure guarded by a group of deranged kids; and Aslan, who fears that his medic studies will be compromised by his girlfriend getting pregnant.
»The Wounded Angel« is the second opus of an eponymous triptych on teenagers about the complex, at times irrational and inadequate relationships that young children becoming adults have with the world. It is the second long feature by Emir Baigazin, the Kazakh director revealed during Berlinale 2013, when it was awarded the Silver Bear.

Boy Actors