About Transposing the story to Kazakhstan's capital, Almaty, a world of brutal, unrestrained economic competition and corruption, STUDENT demonstrates Omirbayev's sensitivity to the moral and emotional toll taken by 21st-century capitalism, a phenomenon he's well-placed to comment on, given the profound transformations that the free-market economy has wreaked on the societies of the formerly Soviet countries of Central Asia. Ali, the protagonist of STUDENT, inhabits a world in which social Darwinism seems to be the law of the land, and his actions follow from the idea that, "If competition is the principle of life, then logically we come to the conclusion that it's alright to kill your competitor." Filmed in Omirbayev's customarily deadpan, uninflected style, STUDENT is a powerful piece of work, artfully fitting Dostoyevsky's time-honored narrative to the grim realities of present-day Kazakhstan. (c) Anthology