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Teen swimmer finds peculiar way of getting a hormonal boost and fulfilling her career ambitions, in this slow and patient coming-of-age tale from Kazakhstan - from the Baltic Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN

With such a descriptive title, it’s no surprise that Zhannat Alshanova’s feature directorial debut is a coming-of-age story. The action takes place in Kazakhstan during the post-Soviet era. Seventeen-year-old Mila (Tamiris Zhangazinova) is a talented swimmer and a stereotypically ornery teenage daughter. Her mother (Assel Kaliyeva) isn’t much more mature either, leaving Mila and her younger sister on their own as she takes a last-minute flight to win the attention of a foreign lover. While her mother’s away, Mila must grow up on her own. The open water swim team, coached by Vlad, played by notable Lithuanian actor Valentin Novopolskij, seduces her with the freedom that the open water sport represents, and the community-shaped hole it fills in her life.

“Seduction” is a good word to describe Mila’s initial attraction to the team. When she first sees the girls practicing, the cinematography mysteriously lingers and slowly zooms in on the other young women, possibly hinting at a physical attraction. The same wandering gaze is applied to Vlad with more directness. A few of the girls even dream of applying the former East German swimming team’s strategy – being impregnated by their coach just before the competition for a hormonal boost – with their own coach. Mila takes a shot at him too, perhaps subconsciously thinking that acting on her sexual feelings will make her a woman. After all, the woman closest to her temporarily abandoned her children to have coitus with a man in another country.

Every time Vlad is on screen, there is an anxiety about his own sexual and moral limits. He never seems too far away from sleeping with her, and that doubt is mostly seeded with the camera’s lingering (and zooming) eye. It’s like a horror film that always builds to a jump scare, which never materialises. A not insignificant factor could be how Vlad’s masculinity interrupts the dominantly feminine spaces of the swim team.

French cinematographer Caroline Champetier certainly knows what she is doing behind the camera. She has worked with an impressive list of pivotal filmmakers including Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Marie Straub, Wang Bing, Leos Carax, and Chantal Akerman before bringing her careful photographic eye to help Alshanova realize her debut feature. With the questionable exception of Leos Carax, with whom she is a frequent collaborator, this is a list of seriously patient filmmakers. If her first feature is any indication of her inclinations, Alshanova is also a slow and patient filmmaker. The scenes often go minutes without talking, discursively rotating through visual subjects like a wandering mind might move through topics. Becoming will surely contend for the category’s top prize based on the brilliant cinematography alone. There’s not an ugly frame in its short 93-minute run-time.

Not unlike the films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, adverse social circumstances affect the girls’ cohesion. One girl on the team is a “charity” project: her parents couldn’t afford the team dues and Vlad lets her swim for free. Regardless of any talent or work ethic, she’s the first girl the coach asks to give up her lane when Mila first starts swimming with them. Her low income immediately discards her to a lesser social class. It’s not the only time wealth and status translate to power. After Mila gets into some legal trouble while her mother is still abroad, the police summon her grandfather since an adult witness is required for them to question her. The grandfather, a member of the old guard of power and a former politician, “deals” with her legal trouble with the scary enigma of a mafia boss.

Unfortunately, the biggest blunder comes at a pivotal moment. The girls bring booze and weed to a poolside party – and, even for expert swimmers, water and intoxication don’t go well together and one of the young women drowns in the pool. How did none of the girls notice her? Did she really get drunk enough to drown from the one or two drinks she slurped? And, most strangely of all, how do they move on so quickly? When a young girl in my middle school died, the entire town seemed to stop for weeks. It changed the entire year, even for those who didn’t know her well. But her own swim teammates move on with so little grief that it’s unintentionally disturbing. Otherwise a remarkable, and very competent movie.

Becoming just premiered in the Baltic Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.


By Joshua Polanski - 19-11-2025

Joshua Polanski is a freelance film and culture writer who writes regularly for the Boston Hassle and In Review Online, while also contributing to the Bay Area Reporter, and Off Screen amongst a varie...

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The fields "country of origin" and "actor" were created in May 2023, and the results are limited to after this date.

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