While the film’s title is only strictly relevant to its opening scene — in which a TV news station films a made-up hybrid sport — the understated Russian-language drama “ Bikechess ” captures the absurdities of working within propagandist frameworks. It builds on several of filmmaker Assel Aushakimova ‘s previous works, as a chronicler of Kazakhstan’s journalism, as well as its social and familial fabrics. The movie often meanders, but its laid-back approach mirrors the frustrating ennui its story seeks to capture, for better and for worse.
Actress Saltanat Nauruz, who led Aushakimova’s first feature “Welcome to the U.S.A.
,” reteams with the writer-director for her sophomore effort. Nauruz plays Dina, a field reporter disillusioned with the manufactured slice-of-life stories she’s forced to cover and a woman who can’t quite find the right avenues to channel her professional drive. Aushakimova’s camera follows her from story to story, capturing the daily indignities of having to lie to her audience about various government campaigns, which leads to withholding but observational scenes where no one is really passionate about these lies — from the film crew to their low-level government subjects — but everyone mechanically plays along.
One such scene, in which Dina tries to film a fake initiative where police interact with citizens by the road, expands on Aushakimova’s 2020 short “Comrade Policeman,” though the film as a whole plays like the c.
