Ayka | Telescope Film
Ayka

Ayka (Айка)

User Rating

  • Russia,
  • Germany,
  • Poland,
  • China,
  • France,
  • Kazakhstan
  • 2019
  • · 100m

Director Sergei Dvortsevoy
Cast Samal Yeslyamova, Dzhipargul Abdilova, David Alaverdyan, Cholponay Borubaeva, Nurzhan Kunnazarova
Genre Drama

Ayka is a young immigrant from Kyrgyzstan living in Moscow. Deep in debt with an expired work permit, she goes from one under-the-table job to the next as she desperately tries to survive the winter and pay off her loans. On top of everything, she has just given birth and faces worrying health issues.

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What are critics saying?

100

CineVue by Martyn Conterio

Once we start to understand Ayka’s life and reasons for behaving how she does, the film gains tragic dimensions and its humanist voice grows into a desperate cry.

70

The Hollywood Reporter by Leslie Felperin

Dvortsevoy deserves praise for making a film willing to show a woman ready to do anything she can to live, unafraid if those choices make her character unsympathetic.

60

Screen Daily by Tim Grierson

Filmmaker Sergey Dvortsevoy thrusts us into a desperate situation and then offers little relief, which effectually captures his heroine’s fraught mind-set but also, unfortunately, begins to produce diminishing dramatic returns.