Tajik filmmaker Bakhtiar Khudojnazarov directs this magical realist tragicomedy about a teenaged Tatar girl who mysteriously finds herself pregnant. Told from the point of view of the gestating fetus, young Mamlakat (Chulpan Khamatova) lives with her excitable father (Ato Mukhamedshanov) and her brother (Moritz Bleibtreu of Run Lola Run (1998)), who went mad after losing a chunk of skull during a war. Mamlakat dreams of becoming an actress, but when the local itinerate theater company breezes through the village, she misses it. Instead, she finds herself rolling down a hill in the arms of one of the actors. When she awakes the next morning, she finds that she's pregnant. In order to restore their family's honor, they pack up and travel across Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan in search of the acting troupe. Luna Papa was screened at the 1999 Venice Film Festival.
by Jonathan Crow
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