8/12 ForReel Score | 3.5/5 Stars

Storytelling has been a part of the human experience since the dawn of time. From cave paintings to campfire stories to novels to film, at our core, we want and need to tell stories, and our memory is key to the process. What we write is informed by our remembered experiences, as is how we perceive and react to what is happening around us. This idea is central to the new film Burning (Ot), a Kyrgyz film written by Aizada Amangeldy and Dastan Madalbekov, and directed by Radik Eshimov. In the film, the citizens of a small town gather in a convenience store during a torrential rainstorm, and each gives their account of what happened to the family who lived in a nearby house that has just burned down.

Much like other films that play with memory, like Kurosawa's Rashomon, Fincher's Gone Girl, and Johnson's The Last Jedi, each time the story is retold, it reflects the storyteller's biases and assumptions, and the result is entirely different accounts of the same circumstances.

In this case, the story concerns a young couple, Merat (Ömürbek Izrailov) and Asel (Aysanat Edigeeva). They recently lost a child, and Merat's mother, Farida (Kalicha Seydalieva), came to help Asel around the house as she has fallen into something of a depression and is behaving strangely, including one night when she disappeared into the woods.

The townsfolk discuss the situation, and three of them offer their explanation for what has happened in the home. Each story has a different angle. One casts Farifa as a witch here to torment Asel. Another has Asel possessed by a Djinn and tormenting Marat and Farida both. The third story –which won't be spoiled here– tells a more grounded and believable story, and one that indicts the rest of the town for their complicity in the events.

As an exercise in storytelling, Burning succeeds spectacularly. Each of the stories is compelling, and the filmmaking in each heightens the horrors that the family is facing. If there's a flaw in the film, it's that with high resolution and much depth of focus, sometimes things look a little too clean for the horrors that are going on, but the cast and crew are all giving one hundred percent to these stories and you can really tell. Edigeeva in particular, whose Asel is put through the ringer three different times in three different ways, commits to each of them, whether she's the victim or the villain, and remains both human and sympathetic.

It's difficult to discuss the third act without spoilers, but know that the third act is by far the most powerful, not because of any supernatural origins but because of how it reframes the previous two and not only everyone in the convenience store but everyone in the town. It's something you might see coming, but even if you do, the execution is good enough that it will still land.

Burning is perhaps betrayed some by its low budget and obvious homage to Kurosawa, but it also signals Kyrgyzstan as a new source of great storytelling. By that measure alone it is an exciting film to watch, but luckily for us it is a good film to boot.

Fantasia 2025 | Movie Review: "Burning" And The Art Of Captivating Storytelling