Women’s agency in Kazakh and Sakha cultures: Tomiris (2019) and Beyberikeen (2019)

This article examines representations of women’s agency in two contemporary films, Tomiris and Beyberikeen, produced in 2019 in Kazakhstan and the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), respectively. Both films achieved commercial success, positioning them as popular cultural texts within their respective national cinemas. Employing both quantitative and qualitative methods – including a modified Bechdel test, character interaction network analysis, contextual and textual analyses – the article investigates the extent to which female characters participate in the narrative construction of post-Soviet national identity. Special attention is given to how gender representation intersects with post-colonial discourse, and to how ancient myths and epic narratives are reframed within modern patriarchal paradigms. While the female protagonists occupy central roles in both films, the analysis demonstrates that their agency is ultimately constrained by nation-building imperatives articulated through masculine-coded ideology. The article contributes to feminist film studies and post-colonial rethinking of post-Soviet regions by highlighting the aesthetic and ideological strategies used by filmmakers to reconcile heritage-based story-telling with contemporary identity politics in Central Asia and the Russian Far East.