Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s Cadet had its world premiere on November 1 in the Competition section of the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival, and the young Kazakhstani auteur appeared on stage with his stars Anna Starchenko and Sharip Serik for a post-screening Q&A session.
 
Yerzhanov, who has already made a name for himself internationally as a cutting-edge filmmaker with The Gentle Indifference of the World (2018) and Yellow Cat (2020), greeted TIFF Programming Director Ichiyama Shozo and the audience, saying, “I’ve known Mr. Ichiyama for some time, but it took a while for us to actually meet each other. I’m influenced by Japanese movies a lot and I think Japanese and Kazakhstani films are quite similar.”
 
He went on to explain, “The film started out as a drama about mother-son relationship. I wrote a script and brought it to production company Tiger Films. They specialize in commercial films, but they liked it and decided to make it. Cadet seems like a mix of two genres, horror and drama. It was something I wanted to experiment with.”
 
Like many films with stories set in a military academy, Cadet starts off as an exposé of the brutality of an army that enforces patriarchal values. However, few other films have taken that premise to the extreme and created something utterly singular. The struggles of a boy who cannot “act like a man” at an elite Kazakhstan academy are slowly subsumed into an exploration of horror elements that invite the return of those who are oppressed by violence, discrimination, and indifference. Above all, Cadet uncovers the systematic injustices at a military institution both in the present and the past.
 
Despite the horrors depicted in the film, the two actors seem to have enjoyed working with Yerzhanov. Starchenko, who played the mother of the boy, said, “It was a great pleasure for me to work with Adilkhan Yerzhanov. It was easy because I knew exactly what he wanted and it was easy to communicate with him. Of course, filming was psychologically challenging, but also meaningful. It was my pleasure to play the role.”
 
Serik, who played an investigator of the horrific events at the military academy, added, “I didn’t have any difficulties while we were shooting this film. But after seeing the finished film, I was really touched and amazed by what a great film I was in.”
 
Although Cadet is set in the present day, the look of the film makes its setting ambiguous. According to the director, this was a conscious attempt to reference Kazakhstan’s history. “I wanted to combine the present with something from the past,” said Yerzhanov. “There are people who still hold on to the illusion of the Soviet Union. In this film, the school principal, played by Alexei Shemes, lives in the past that already collapsed. His stubborn way of thinking is a hindrance to all kinds of things. That’s something that we wanted to incorporate in this film.”
 
Such a distortion of reality is also evident in Yerzhanov’s unique framing, which places its subjects off-center or even close to the edge of the frame. Yerzhanov noted, “We did that on purpose to make people feel that something is off-balance. We wanted to convey a sense of discomfort and insecurity to the audience.”
 
Q&A Session: Competition
Cadet
Guests: Adilkhan Yerzhanov (Director/Screenplay), Anna Starchenko (Actor), Sharip Serik (Actor)