Saltanat Nauruz

Dina works as a journalist for the national television station. The stories she is asked to report on are becoming increasingly absurd and full of praise for the government. Her love life is limited to a few secret meetings with her married camera­man. Dina looks after her young sis­ter, a lesbian activist, who regularly finds herself in trouble with the au­thorities.

Aliya, a 36 year old Kazakh lesbian, has, for the first time in her life, tried to play the Green Card Lottery and won. Now she cannot decide whether to leave Kazakhstan or stay. On one hand, Aliya is tired of the stagnation, corruption, and dictatorship of the Kazakh society, she wants changes in her life. But on the other, she is afraid of uncertainty and to start all over again in a foreign country.

Two workers are having a leisurely conversation. More and more often people see in the sky red tails of comets, wonder creatures appear from nowhere and a roar is said to be coming from the underground. What is the meaning of it all? – asks one of them. The other replies that he has never seen anything like that in his life. And even if all of the above mentioned exists, is it worthwhile paying attention to it? The important thing is to do one’s job because life goes its own way.

In modern day New York City a ninety eight year old women lies helpless on her death bed. As her granddaughter begins to take on the chores of cleaning the apartment, she comes upon a story that her grandmother had been writing. It is the story of Blooming Flowers. The account is from her younger days as a journalist of her 1935 trip to a remote village hidden along the border of China and Cambodia.