Deal At The Border

Aza and Samat are two young runners doing a big drug lord’s dirty work by moving illicit packages across the river that marks the Kyrgyzstan-Kazakhstan border. One morning, the duo finds a desperate young woman bruised and battered on the riverbank. Aza’s instant attachment to the girl and the lengths he will go to bring her back home evoke memories of a pained past, sending him on a path of increasingly dangerous consequences. Kyrgyzstan’s first-ever narrative film tells a story that might seem familiar but takes unexpected turns into a moving tale of guilt, childhood trauma, and the deadly cost of empathy.