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(Fantasia Fest 2026) SICKO (2025)...Obsession Has Competition. One of the Year's Best Thrillers Comes from Kazakhstan

By. Radek Velicka

 

Republished with permission. View original content HERE.

It begins as a black comedy and gradually descends into a world of violence and complete moral collapse. Kazakhstan’s Sicko is one of tone of the biggest surprises of this year’s Fantasia.

Kazakh cinema was practically a complete unknown to me before this year’s Fantasia. Honestly, I’m not even sure whether I had ever seen a Kazakh film before. But if SICKO is any indication of what the country’s younger filmmakers are capable of, Kazakhstan is definitely going on my radar from now on.

Director Aitore Zholdaskali’s solo feature debut is, in fact, one of the biggest discoveries I saw at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

And yet it begins like a fairly conventional drama. Azamat (Ayan Utepbergen) and Tansholpan (Dilnaz Kurmangali) are a young couple drowning in debt and desperately looking for a way out. Eventually, they come up with a solution: fake a serious illness and raise money online for supposed medical treatment. But their scam goes viral. The money starts pouring in, the public begins following their story, and everything slowly spirals out of control.

From Black Comedy Straight Into Hell

The first part of SICKO plays almost like a dramedy or an extremely dark social satire. One lie has to be covered with another, the scam grows increasingly complicated, and some situations become genuinely funny through their sheer absurdity. For quite a while, you still have no idea just how far Zholdaskali intends to take the story.

With every passing minute, however, there is less and less to laugh about.

The humour gradually disappears, the problems pile up, money stops being a solution, and Azamat begins to change. SICKO transforms from a black comedy into a crime thriller and eventually moves into some extremely harsh horror territory. The film becomes progressively darker, rawer and more brutal. And when the violence finally arrives, Zholdaskali certainly isn’t afraid of blood or gore.

What makes it work is that these different genres never feel like several separate movies stitched together. The transformation happens gradually, almost imperceptibly. At some point, you realise you have stopped laughing and started watching something genuinely disturbing.

 

Park Chan-wook, Kazakh Style

While watching SICKO, I repeatedly found myself thinking about South Korean cinema, and especially Park Chan-wook. Not simply because of the brutality. What reminded me of Park most was the ability to combine absurd humor, social criticism, striking visual style, and people willing to do increasingly horrible things because of money or their own egos.

Last year, I saw Park’s No Other Choice, and it came to mind several times while watching SICKO. Both films follow a man crushed by his economic circumstances, whose attempts to preserve some idea of a normal life gradually begin to consume his morality. The difference is that while No Other Choice remains primarily a pitch-black social satire, SICKO eventually leaves the wider social environment behind and digs much deeper into the destruction of one man and one relationship.

The International Film Festival Rotterdam even directly highlighted the influence of Korean horror and its mixture of bloody violence, black humor, and social criticism. Beneath all that style, it identified a commentary on gender relations and late capitalism.

That description fits perfectly.

Why Obsession?

The comparison with Obsession (2026) is not simply because these are two of the best genre films I have seen this year. Despite all their differences, both ultimately tell stories about toxic relationships that gradually turn into traps.

In Obsession, Bear wishes for Nikki to love him and gets exactly what he asked for – only in a form that slowly destroys any idea of a healthy relationship. SICKO approaches the same territory from the opposite direction. Azamat and Tansholpan are already together when the film begins, and their shared scam initially even brings them closer. But the more their plan falls apart, the more their relationship collapses with it, until control, fear, and violence begin taking over.

Obsession uses the supernatural to tell a story about forced love, while SICKO shows how a relationship can disintegrate without anything supernatural at all. All it takes is money, pressure, and a man gradually losing his remaining inhibitions.

A Film That Is Supposed to Hurt

That is also exactly how Zholdaskali talks about his own filmmaking. He says he likes movies that can “hurt you through the frame.” Among his points of inspiration, he mentions the hyperrealism of Aleksei German Sr., David Fincher, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu. At the same time, he admits that he does not consider himself a cinephile who constantly watches, analyzes, and studies movies. He is more fascinated by the act of creating them, and says that almost all of his decisions are based on intuition, feelings, and sensory impressions.

And SICKO really does hurt. Not only because of the bloody scenes, but because of the way a man who initially seems like an ordinary desperate person searching for a quick solution to his financial problems gradually transforms into someone completely different.

Ayan Utepbergen deserves a great deal of credit for making that transformation work. The film lets Azamat fall one step at a time, and with every new decision you wonder whether he has finally reached the line he will refuse to cross. Alongside him, Dilnaz Kurmangali is equally impressive, as Tansholpan experiences the same situation in an entirely different way. The dynamic between the two of them ultimately becomes perhaps the strongest and certainly one of the most uncomfortable parts of the entire film.

The Sickness of One Man and an Entire Society

The title SICKO gradually takes on a much broader meaning than simply referring to a fabricated illness. Zholdaskali sees scams, corruption, and the gradual disappearance of guilt as symptoms of a sick society – something that slowly spreads into relationships, families, and the wider world around them.

SICKO feels perfectly attuned to an era in which someone else’s tragedy can be turned into content, human compassion can be monetized, and the right story can turn an ordinary person into an internet celebrity within days. The more emotional the story, the more attention it receives. The more attention it receives, the more money it generates.

According to the director, the story grew out of the increasing number of real-life online scams that he and his collaborators encountered. He says the film actually toned some things down. Even its most absurd and brutal moments are supposedly less frightening than stories that can be found in real news reports. “Life has far more things to be afraid of,” he says.

After watching the film’s second half, it is not exactly comforting to hear that this is supposedly the restrained version.

The Film That Became a Phenomenon at Home

Before its domestic release in Kazakhstan, SICKO faced interference and had its age rating raised from 18+ to 21+, restricting screenings to the hours between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Despite that limitation, it became a major box-office success at home. Fantasia cites approximately $2 million in domestic revenue and describes it as the first Kazakh film with a 21+ rating to achieve such a result. The film also became a wider topic of public discussion.

On the festival circuit, SICKO has already travelled an impressive distance – from Rotterdam through Brussels and Buenos Aires to London, Cluj, and finally Montreal, where it screened at Fantasia. In Brussels, it also won the Black Raven competition.

Not a bad calling card for a feature debut.

SICKO began for me as an intriguing festival curiosity from a national cinema I knew practically nothing about. It ended as the best film I saw at this year’s Fantasia and one of the strongest thrillers I have seen all year. It is entertaining, brutal, visually distinctive, and superbly acted, but most importantly, it manages to change its identity several times over the course of a hundred minutes without ever losing control. If Aitore Zholdaskali wanted to make a film that “hurts you through the frame,” he succeeded completely. And for me, Obsession now has a very serious rival this year.

For more Fantasia Fest coverage, read our reviews of YOU ARE THE FILM and UNHOLY NIGHT.