Tengr Cinema is an independent author’s film studio directed by Arltan Bembeyev, who works in Kalmykia.
Arltan Bembeyev was born in Elista. He received an education in information technology, and then studied fine arts at the Penza Art College and the Ilya Glazunov Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.
Before cinema, he was engaged in drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, graphic design and 3D graphics. This experience largely determined his directorial approach: attention to composition, space, the human face and landscape.
Bembeev came to the cinema on his own. “In 2017” he joined the Kalmyk film society Nomad and directed a short film in Kalmyk “Mini Tag” (“My Steppe”). This film began his interest in stories related to the steppe, memory, loneliness and human life within his own culture.
Historical memory has become one of the constant themes of his work. The film “Farewell, the Land of Kalmykia” addresses the deportation of the Kalmyk people. The visual source for the painting was, among other things, the works of his father, the People’s Artist of Kalmykia, Grigory Bembeyev.
“Later,” Arltan directed the film “Soudle” (“The Bench”), a chamber drama about a chance meeting between two people. The film participated in Russian and international film festivals.
Bembeyev’s films are shot mainly in Kalmykia, with local actors and a small team. For the director, the steppe is not just a place of action, but an independent part of the narrative. He is interested in a person in the face of time, loss, and the need to make a choice: stay or leave, keep or let go.
Today, Arltan Bembeev develops Tengr Cinema and is working on feature-length projects. One of them is “Dot”, a family drama about several generations of a single family living in a shepherd’s camp in the Kalmyk steppe.
For Bembeyev, cinema is primarily a way to preserve what is gradually disappearing: people, space, language, memory, and lifestyle.