BURNING (OT) movie poster |  ©2026 IndiePix

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Asanat Edigeeva, Omurbek Izrailov, Kalicha Seidalieva, Zhanilai Isakova, Askar Kachkynbaev, Ruslan Orozakunov
Writers: Aizada Amangeldy & Dastan Madalbekov
Director: Radik Eshimov
Distributor: IndiePix Films
Release Date: September 4, 2026 (IndiePix Unlimited on Prime Video); October 13, 2026 (DVD/VOD/digital)

 Here’s something we in the West don’t see every day: a horror movie (or any kind of movie, for that matter) from Kyrgyzstan.

Kyrgyzstan, officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is (per Wikipedia) a landlocked country in Central Asia that shares a border on one side with Kazakhstan and on another with China. Despite the proximity to China, the cultural influences seem to be largely Islamic and Russian (the screener provided for review even came with the option of Russian subtitles – BURNING is in Kyrgyz, with English subtitles.)

BURNING is set in a small working-class Kyrgyz town, where everybody has a cellphone, but nobody even blinks when a Muslim cleric and his assistants are called in to exorcise a djinn out of a local man.

Directed by Radik Eshimov and written by Aizada Amangeldy & Dastan Madalbekov, BURNING begins on a night of pouring rain, as firefighters struggle to put out a blaze that has engulfed a suburban house. The firehouse abruptly and mysteriously runs out of water, although it eventually starts up again.

Once they’re sure their own homes are safe, neighbors straggle into the tiny local market to talk about what’s happened. The main point of contention isn’t the event itself – there’s consensus on that – but what led to the conflagration.

BURNING is broken into three formally-labeled sections: Act I: Guilt, Act II: Excuse, and Act III: Reason.

Act I is seen and told from the point of view of neighbor Zhyrgal (Ruslan Orozakunov), who considers the young couple next door, heavily-pregnant Asel (Asanat Edigeeva) and her husband Marat (Omurbek Izrailov), to be sympathetic souls who tragically lost their little boy a year ago. But now Marat has brought his mother Farima (Kalicha Seidalieva) from the village where she lives to stay with Asel while he goes away for a few days.

Per Zhyrgal, Farima is icy and formidable. She performs odd-looking prayer rituals in the yard and is endlessly critical of the trying-hard-to-please Asel. Asel becomes convinced that Farima is trying to steal her unborn child and that Marat is siding with his mother.

Another neighbor, Durus (Askar Kachkynbaev), married to Aisalkyn (Zhanilai Isakova) and parent of their two little daughters, disagrees. In his version, Act II, Farima is a kind and caring woman who truly wants to help her daughter-in-law. Here, Asel is not pregnant but insists that she is. Her actions are such that we understand why Marat thinks she needs an exorcism.

Aisalkyn maintains that she knows the truth, and Act III is her account.

In Act III, BURNING becomes a full-on horror movie, although perhaps not in the way we were expecting. It’s arguable that some of it is over the top, but then again, it’s not unbelievable.

Without knowing much about Kyrgyz norms, it’s hard to determine whether BURNING plays in its homeland as revelatory, or simply a reasonably suspenseful, melancholy drama that invites the audience to determine what’s real.

One main issue is how all three of the tale-tellers are confident they know about conversations and events they are not present for. It seems a little odd that none of them (or anybody else) asks them how they can be so sure of what they didn’t see or hear.

Otherwise, BURNING handles the supernatural with understatement and proficiency. Something uncanny may or may not be occurring, but it’s never so huge that it defies credibility, and never so small that we can entirely discount it.

Edigeeva, Izrailov, and Seidalieva each seamlessly give three wholly different performances as the same character, and Isakova is sensitive as the diffident Aisalkyn.

However we interpret it, there are primal forces and feelings on display. BURNING is intriguing in both its structure and its presentation of a somewhat unfamiliar world. The filmmakers know what they’re doing and, by the end, we find ourselves invested.

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