This postmodern drama’s main thrust is a game of and with cinematic and cultural symbols. The collapse of the Soviet Union is rendered as an apocalypse of sorts - the action takes place in a post-apocalypse, otherwise known as the beginning of 1990s. The place for the action: The Wild East, or Kazakhstan. The plot of film is borrowed from Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai where the inhabitants of a village (Lilliputians) invite seven fighters to protect them from bandits. The Lilliputians represent a vanishing Soviet civilization, the fighters cinematic superheroes like Yul Brynner, Sylvester Stallone and Marilyn Monroe. The bandits? Western civilization. (Gulnara ABIKEYEVA)