BIKECHESS (Tribeca 2024) – Review by Sherin Nicole
The title, Bikechess, is the first indication the film is a farce focused on the hyperrealism behind how ridiculous, yet dangerous, governments can be. This second feature from writer/director Assel Aushakimova is not a comedy in the typical sense, you’re unlikely to laugh out loud. Bikechess rolls its eyes at its subject matter in the absolute certainty you will get the joke: How absurd the life of a journalist is when your job is to tell the truth, but you’d better not.
Set in Kazakhstan, the film has garnered acclaim, winning the Karlovy Vary Film Festival’s Works in Progress award and the Best International Narrative Feature at the 2024 Tribeca Festival. The narrative centers on Dina (Saltanat Nauruz), a journalist for ‘state TV’ who must report on increasingly ludicrous stories in the service of the government’s glory—and to keep her salary flowing. The money matters because her younger sister is a lesbian revolutionary who lives with Dina and constantly needs bailing out. You have to love the irony; one sister produces propaganda so the other can dismantle it.
This satirical portrayal of state-controlled media highlights how far the state will go to put a smiling mask on societal issues. Even while co-opting real people. Each subsequent assignment unfolds like a behind-the-scenes for a play, pushing Dina’s reports closer and closer to theater. Her personal life isn’t quite as complex, but it’s complicated, marked by sneaky links with her married cameraman and trading her integrity so her sister can live freely as an activist. While the film isn’t emotional, but a satirical indictment of systems of oppression, you can’t help but feel for Dina’s plight.
Bikechess evolves the way an everyday life spent in unhappiness does. There’s no bombast or drama. Only a slowly dawning truth that some situations are unwinnable. The range of expressions crossing Dina’s face in the closing seconds—from frustration to incredulity to laughing resignation—is proof of the fact.
