How Long Is “The Light Thief”?

A man who is guilty of minor corruption for benevolent reasons comes up against a man deep in major corruption for his own profit in this comedy-drama from director Aktan Arym Kubat. Svet-ake (Arym Kubat) is a good-hearted family man who works for the electric company in a small village in Kyrgyzstan. A number of folks in Svet-ake's neighborhood are seniors on a fixed income, and he helps them out by adjusting their meters on the sly to keep their bills low. Bezkat (Askat Sulaimanov) is a powerful but corrupt politician from the city who wants to make a quick windfall by selling part of Svet-ake's village to a Chinese firm; to help make this happen, Bezkat puts his political muscle to work and sees to it that his unscrupulous relative Mansur (Stanbek Toichubaev) becomes the new mayor. While Mansur is forced to bend to the will of the people when they object to the land deal, Svet-ake assumes this means Mansur isn't a crook, which makes trouble for him when he proposes switching the village over to cleaner and renewable wind power. Svet-ake (aka The Light Thief) was an official selection at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival.