The Hill

A hill in Kyrgyzstan inhabited by men, women, some children. Smoke, birds, a waste dump like a Leviathan. Among them, are a traumatized former soldier, a grieving mother, and young people deprived of a future, living and facing their destiny. The violent legacy of the break-up of the Soviet Union is dissected in an astonishing documentary shot entirely on the absolute symbol of globalized consumption, at the very end of the value chain of capitalism, in a country at the periphery of a globalized economy. Like a spin-off of Dante’s Inferno, this documentary proves how cinema can be generous as an act of sharing, a cinema of respect, with its plastic force, the sober power of its shots, and its sleek rhythm. A political cinema that, without using any rhetorical or dominating discourse, shows us the unacceptable while asserting that human life is the most important value of all.