“Black Red Yellow” – an interwoven love story at the 2026 goEast Festival of Central and Eastern European Film7 min read
In Black Red Yellow, Kyrgyz director Aktan Arym Kubat tells the unhappy love story of the carpet weaver Turdugul and the shepherd Kadyr. The film had its European premiere at goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film. Novastan was there.
Aktan Arym Kubat is back on the European stage: the director, regarded as a mainstay of Kyrgyz auteur cinema, celebrated the European premiere of his new film Black Red Yellow (original title: “Kara Kyzyl Sary”) on 26 April as part of the 26th goEast Film Festival in Wiesbaden.
The film follows the talented carpet weaver Turdugul, who travels through the country like a nomad, creating unique pieces in the homes of her clients that reflect their souls. As is usual in Aktan Arym Kubat’s films, Black Red Yellow is divided into three parts, each named after one of the colours in the title.
Black
The film begins with a framing narrative in which the director follows, in close-up, the creation of a woollen carpet. Carrying this carpet with her, Turdugul, a woman of mature years, sets off on a journey to the village of Kök-Suu. During the journey by marshrutka, Turdugul remembers a story that took place 30 years ago.
Kyrgyzstan in the 1990s: the young Turdugul (played by Nargiza Mamatkulova) arrives in Kök-Suu at the home of her clients. The lady of the house, Shirin, suffers from her childlessness as well as from the economic circumstances in the household of her husband Kadyr (played by the director’s son, Mirlan Abdykalikov). Kadyr, who had worked as a horse breeder on a state farm in Soviet times, lost his job after the collapse of the USSR and began drinking. He loves his horse more than his wife, whom he was forced to marry at his parents’ behest.
Shirin (right), played by Aigul Busurmankulova
Shirin, by contrast, loves her husband deeply, and Kadyr’s indifference, together with his unwillingness and inability to improve the couple’s economic situation, repeatedly leads to arguments. During one quarrel, Shirin threatens to drown herself in the roaring river in front of the village, but the women who run after her manage to stop her.
Between Kadyr, who unlike his wife is very placid, and Turdugul, feelings slowly begin to develop.
Red
In the second part of the film, Kadyr and Turdugul become aware of their mutual but forbidden love. Turdugul makes herself beautiful for Kadyr, and he stretches a shade-giving cloth over her workplace in the courtyard, arousing his wife’s jealousy. Once again, Shirin threatens to drown herself. This time, no one runs after her, but Kadyr, who sees through the ploy, later finds her sitting on the riverbank, sits down beside her, and asks her to come home.
When Kadyr visits Turdugul in the evening to confess his feelings, he is caught by Grandmother Marsia, in whose house Turdugul has found shelter. The old woman sends him away and tells Turdugul to keep away from Kadyr. But it is too late for that. When, on another night, Kadyr sends a drinking companion to distract Grandmother Marsia and does not return home all night, the scandal can no longer be avoided. Shirin destroys the loom in the courtyard and drags the unfinished carpet to Grandmother Marsia’s house, reproaching her and demanding that she drive “the slut [Turdugul]” out of the village.
Turdugul and Grandmother Marsia
Kadyr realizes what he has done and tries to run after Turdugul, but fails. Later, Shirin finds him sitting by the river. This time, she is the one who asks him to come home. News then arrives of Grandmother Marsia’s death: she has not survived the shame she brought upon Kadyr and Shirin.
Yellow
A few years later: Turdugul is once again nearby for a commission. When Kadyr learns of this and tracks her down, he goes to see her. Turdugul flees from him into her client’s house. Through the closed door, Kadyr asks her to marry him. Turdugul, who still has feelings for Kadyr, refuses – aware that their impossible love would destroy his family.
That evening, she sits with her client – an old woman who acts as a guardian of the increasingly abandoned villages in this border region. She keeps the keys to the abandoned houses in order to protect them from strangers. Family portraits that she has rescued from the empty homes cover the wall of her modest house. When she speaks of Turdugul’s talent as a gift from God, Turdugul, who has wandered since her youth in order to depict the fate of others in her artistic carpets, confesses that instead of this talent she would rather have found happiness in life.
Kadyr, too, realizes that he must accept his fate. In the final scene of the third part, we see that he has sold his beloved horse in order to fulfill the now-pregnant Shirin’s wish and buy a cow.
A play of colours
The film ends with a fourth section titled Black Red Yellow, which Aktan Arym Kubat, as he explained during the film discussion in Wiesbaden, wants to be understood not as a fourth part but as an epilogue. In this epilogue, the film returns to the framing narrative. Kadyr is buried, and Turdugul has her carpet handed over to Shirin. When the latter later unfolds the carpet, it becomes clear that, alongside the black and red colours typical of carpets from the Batken region, it contains a significant amount of yellow.
Asked about this play of colours and its symbolic meaning after the premiere screening, Aktan Arym Kubat explained that the three colours in the title each stand for one of the protagonists. Black, as the “colour of man and earth,” stands for Kadyr, while red, the colour of emotions and love, stands for Shirin. Yellow is Turdugul’s individual colour, which she brings into the traditional black-and-red carpet, thereby weaving her own fate together with that of Kadyr and Shirin.
This symbolism, which may not be immediately apparent to Western festivalgoers, once again makes clear that the director, celebrated both at home and abroad, gears his films toward his domestic audience. As Aktan Arym Kubat explained in Wiesbaden, one of his aims with the film was to show his compatriots their own country, as well as its recent history, with the economic upheavals that followed independence and the rural exodus that ensued.
A poetic and sensitive film
As in his previous films, such as The Wings of People, Aktan Arym Kubat succeeds in combining a sensitively told story about ordinary people with subtly woven social criticism. At the same time, the director remains faithful to his own visual language, capturing images that appear almost accidental, such as a moth in the carpet yarn, as well as landscape details like the rushing mountain river or poplars swaying in the wind, and skillfully weaving them into the plot.
Special mention should be made of the melancholic musical accompaniment (Balasagyn Musayev) and the sound (Mars Tugelov), which capture the rush of the wind and an atmosphere tentatively broken by birdsong. Both make a considerable contribution to the film’s atmosphere.
Black Red Yellow, which as recently as June last year won at the Shanghai International Film Festival, went home empty-handed at the awards ceremony of the 26th goEast Festival (the Golden Lily for the main prize this year went to “Clouds Move with Great Speed” by Ukrainian director Roman Ostrovskyi). Nevertheless, Aktan Arym Kubat has once again made an absolutely worthwhile, sensitive and melancholy film, one that manages to remain slow throughout without ever becoming ponderous.
Black Red Yellow will be shown on 2 July 2026 as part of the University of Passau’s Eastern Europe Film Series.
This review was translated by Maya Ivanova and originally published in German on 3 May 2026 by our partner publication Novastan.org
