Rotten Tomatoes
Cancel Movies Tv shows FanStore News Showtimes

The Light Thief

Play trailer Poster for The Light Thief 2010 1h 16m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
93% Tomatometer 14 Reviews 65% Popcornmeter 100+ Ratings
An electrician brings light, love and loyalty to people.

Critics Reviews

View All (14) Critics Reviews
Derek Malcolm London Evening Standard Cinematographer Hassan Kydyraliyev has done a good job, but the film - Kubat's sixth - belongs securely to this cherishable director and actor. Rated: 4/5 Jul 29, 2011 Full Review Anthony Quinn Independent (UK) Rated: 3/5 Jul 29, 2011 Full Review Andrew Pulver Guardian Director-star Aktan Arym Kubat has come up with an illuminating parable about the clash of tradition and modernity... Rated: 3/5 Jul 28, 2011 Full Review David Walsh World Socialist Web Site Kubat's work follows "Svet-ake" ("Mr. Light"), played by the director, an electrician and inventor who restores power for the impoverished villagers. He brings other kinds of "light" to their lives as well. Feb 14, 2021 Full Review Caroline Jowett Daily Express (UK) The genial satire of the early scenes eventually gives way to bitter tragedy in a quixotic but charming salute to an irrepressible dreamer. Rated: 3/5 Jul 31, 2011 Full Review Philip French Observer (UK) A touching, pawkily amusing example of that fairly rare genre, the satirical tragedy. Jul 31, 2011 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View All (4) audience reviews
Audience Member Without a bias that this movie has come from Kazakhstan , an unknown country for me, still this is sophisticated and full of beautiful and vigorous scenes. ï 1/4­r. Light man is an attractive small hero helping people who canâ(TM)t afford to pay electricity and having a passion to utilize wind power for his village. His smile always shows his warm heart with or without words. Iâ(TM)m surprised to know that Mr. Light man is a director himself ! Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/05/23 Full Review Audience Member I am not, in truth, much familiar with the cinematic tradition of Kyrgyzstan. This seemed an engaging enough comedy about a village electrician and rural politics. A local electrician, 'Mr Light', arranges for the poor to get free electricity and gets into trouble with the authorities. He has his own wind generator and dreams of large-scale generation. There are surprising, for us, juxtapositions - an excellent scene of two drunks sstumbling home with a bike and a horse. The village is not attractive - Soviet era low buildings - and the trains from somewhere to somewhere else speed by. This is a constant reminder that there are other, more desirable places and the locals go there - to Russia, to Italy. There was also insight into the importance of attracting Chinese businesses in underdeveloped post-Soviet Central Asia - a whole socio-political sphere which is invisible to westerners. It is when the imperative of modern needs, the all-pervading corruption, the entrenchedness of tradition and innocent but rigid idealism clash that the movie suddenly finishes with unexpected and shocking tragedy. Tragedy that you realise was edging towards the inevitable. A weird film about a culture which is quite unknown to us. A film that was unusual, intriguing, and I felt was ultimately unsatisfactory, but I'm not sure. It may be better than I think. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/13/23 Full Review Mike M At a town hall meeting we see early on, one of the more poetic contributors begins a speech with the words "we live in a valley between mountains, through which passes the wind", and if ever a film could be read as an expression of national character, "The Light Thief" would be it: forever changeable in its outlook, it's evidently the work of a cinema (that as [Ben] Hopkins illustrated [in "37 Uses for a Dead Sheep"]) is still working out the best way to gather up and tell its stories. There's a distinct choppiness about the way the hero goes from being the subject of a police inquiry to hooking up the Government headquarters, and from there to his eventual fate as a plaything for the rich. We sense the focus drifting from one sequence to the next, which - though a clear sign of a filmmaker with much to say - does occasionally leave the viewer having to chase meanings and referents. Still, the bold, widescreen imagery certainly gets in a lot of varied local colour: the, ahem, climax is a state-sponsored sex show involving a live camel, a frisky metaphor for the bondage many of the area's residents find themselves born into. (Someone, inevitably, gets the hump.) Hard to argue with co-writer/director Aktan Arym Kubat's smashing lead performance, too: modest and - yes - grounded, holding together his paperchase of a script with the most delightful, happy-making face seen on screen for several months. It remains interesting rather than essential, and insistently niche, but "The Light Thief" remains everything good, conscientious summer counterprogramming ought to be: unusual, surprising, and interested in more than noisy robots or aliens - a bracing draught of fresh air through cinemas currently choked up with hotdog and popcorn farts. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 08/04/11 Full Review Audience Member my favourite kirgistani film Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/18/23 Full Review Read all reviews
The Light Thief

My Rating

Read More Read Less POST RATING WRITE A REVIEW EDIT REVIEW

Cast & Crew

N-Secure 20% 46% N-Secure Watchlist Do You Believe? 26% 83% Do You Believe? Watchlist Zubaan 86% % Zubaan Watchlist Courageous 40% 86% Courageous Watchlist Discover more movies and TV shows. View More

Movie Info

Synopsis An electrician brings light, love and loyalty to people.
Director
Aktan Abdykalykov
Producer
Cédomir Kolar, Marc Baschet, Altynai Koichumanova, Thanassis Karathanos, Denis Vaslin, Karl Baumgartner
Screenwriter
Aktan Abdykalykov, Talip Ibrahimov
Production Co
Arte, Oy Art Film, Pallas Film, Volya Films, Asap Films, ZDF
Genre
Drama
Original Language
Kyrgyz
Release Date (Streaming)
Dec 9, 2016
Runtime
1h 16m
Aspect Ratio
Flat (1.85:1)