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Abstract

This paper analyses how contemporary Kazakh cinema constructs and interrogates masculinity in the context of post-Soviet social transformation. Since the 2000s, many films have centred on male protagonists navigating the pressures placed on men in a rapidly changing social environment. Male-dominated narratives foreground tensions between patriarchal norms and shifting gender expectations while also reflecting transformations in class relations and national identity.

Through a close reading of selected films from the 2010s–2020s, the paper identifies several recurring masculine figures: the corrupt man of power; the conflicted urban professional negotiating modernity; the marginalised man struggling to retain dignity amid economic instability; and the hyper-dominant figure of toxic masculinity who asserts control through physical aggression. Popular comedies add further archetypes: the immature and often unattractive “man-child” who nevertheless gets the girl; the boastful but incompetent macho man; the opportunistic trickster navigating informal economies; the henpecked husband whose authority collapses at home; and the ungrateful or greedy son whose moral failure is exposed through the loss or neglect of his mother.

These figures expose tensions between patriarchal ideals of male authority and the flawed men who populate contemporary narratives, while also reflecting anxieties about class mobility, urban–rural divides and competing Kazakh- and Russian-speaking identities. The paper argues that Kazakh cinema has become a key cultural arena where masculinity is both reinforced and contested in contemporary Kazakhstan.