Skip to content

Alikis

Emetjan Memet

Release year: 2019

Run time: 12'13

Film type: Comedy

Synopsis

Nijat's beloved dog Alikis has been lost by his wife's uncle who was taking care of the dog. An unhappy Nijat goes to look for his Alikis, but he does not know that his wife is a smoker.

 

Director biography

Born in Kashgar in Xinjiang province in 1991, he finished his postgraduate study in Beijing Film Academy. He is good at presenting subtle relationship between characters with humor and with stylised audio-visual language. His short films Accordion and Blessed Winter won the Best Film award at the fifth and fourth 86358 Jia Village Short Film Week respectively; Blessed Winter won the Special Recognition Award at the 45th Hong Kong International Film Festival; ALIKIS won the award of Jury Special Mentioned for Chinese Short Films at the third Beijing International Short Film Festival, and was shortlisted for Spotlight Section at Osaka Asian Film Festival. He served as a jury at the fourth Pingyao International Film Festival, and participated in the training camp of the 15th FIRST International Film Festival.

Catalogue of work:
2019.07 short Fruit Garden
2019.11 short Alikis
2020.01 short Blessed Winter
2020.07 short About Donkey
2021.07 The Accordion
2021.09 A Guest

Director's statement

This short film originated as one of my tutor's assignments. This required me to shoot on the theme "one day a man finds out a secret of his wife or girlfriend". I then conceived of the story Alikis. The style was determined by actual conditions. The original idea was to make a more realist short film, using a common performance style. However, I couldn't find suitable actors. I could only find friends who had no acting experience. I thought about it and decided to try this kind of “performance without performance”. However, with this deadpan performance style I thought long lines weren’t suitable, and so I changed the original lines to make every sentence very concise. In addition, the leading actor had only two days free at that time. In order to save time, I decided to shoot each scene in only one take.

Before shooting, I rehearsed some parts of the film in the evening, and then spent two days shooting the actors. After that, I spent one day shooting street views and scenery, completing the whole shoot in three days, at the total cost of about 6000 yuan.

However, in the end, I was satisfied with the final appearance of the short film.

Awards:

  • 3rd Beijing International Short Film Festival, Jury Special Mention for Chinese Short Films.
  • Shortlisted for Spotlight Section of Osaka Asian Film Festival
  • International Short Film Festival of Canton
  • 15th Chinese Youth Film Week