Shot in the late spring/early summer of 2010, the film explores the reasons why Kyrgyzstan, a small, land-locked country in Central Asia, made international headlines repeatedly during 2010. Occupying a pivotal role in Great Power rivalries and in the international drug trade, Kyrgyzstan has felt the effects of the disintegration of the former Soviet Union more dramatically than any other post-Soviet state. Just five years ago, the Kyrgyz “Tulip Revolution” was hailed as a peaceful readjustment of a post-Soviet country, once acknowledged as one of the only “democratic” regimes of Central Asia in the 1990s. But the Tulip Revolution was soon betrayed, and under Kurmanbek Bakiyev and his “family regime,” Kyrgyzstan descended into authoritarianism.
The film chronicles the popular revolt that led to the toppling of president Bakiyev and his clan in April 2010, and the ever-deepening chaos into which the country plunged in its aftermath, culminating with the large-scale inter-ethnic violence in June 2010. The lack of power and legitimacy of the interim government, with its own family network and clan-based divisions, have prevented it from stabilizing the country politically, economically, and socially. All this is documented through interviews with several top officials, and “people on the street.” 
From Bishkek to the southern cities of Jalal-Abad and Osh, over the breath-taking highway uniting North and South through the Tian-Shan mountain range, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Russians, Meshketian Turks, and other ethnic minorities share their anger, frustrations, and hopes. In an interview in his Moscow exile, Askar Akayev, the first president of independent Kyrgyzstan, himself toppled during the Tulip Revolution, gives his own version of history and current events.
Has Kyrgyzstan woken up from its early childhood innocence for the first time since it gained independence with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991? Has the dream of becoming the “Switzerland of Central Asia” been shattered forever? – asks Gulzat Egemberdieva, a young Kyrgyz journalist, whose voice and presence threads through the film. As show the heartbreaking photographs and footage shot after the June riots in the city of Osh, there seems to be no end in sight of the drama opposing Kyrgyz and Uzbek, and other nationalities. Tensions continue to rise, and the economy continues to deteriorate. For all this, as Raia Kadyrova, the Kyrgyz president of the foundation “For International Tolerance” put it, the process of reconciliation will be immensely difficult, but the only one possible “because it is our homeland, we have nowhere else to go.”
For a French synopsis, see: europe-asia.org
