Interview: Alina Mustafina on Her New Book and Freedom in Filmmaking

Kazakh filmmaker and writer Alina Mustafina moved from Almaty to Dubai before relocating to Barcelona with her husband. There, she studied film directing after working as a journalist, a career change she recounts in her second book, Between Heaven and Cinema: When a Dream Changes the Route. Her debut feature documentary, Gingerbread for Her Dad, premiered at the Busan International Film Festival in 2024 and competed at the Torino Film Festival later that year. Those screenings give her firsthand experience of taking a film made in Kazakhstan to international audiences. The Times of Central Asia spoke with Mustafina about her new book and the prospects for Kazakh filmmakers abroad. She discusses life in a Spanish film school and the challenge of explaining Central Asian humor to foreign collaborators. TCA: How did the idea for Between Heaven and Cinema come about? Alina Mustafina: This is my second book. It's about how my husband and I decided to change our lives when we were already in our thirties. We moved from the Emirates to Spain. I retrained as a filmmaker after working as a journalist, and he went from being an engineer to a pilot. I describe the book as “a story about a pilot's wife and a filmmaker's husband.” I started writing it back in 2021, still excited about the publication of my first book, How to Move to Dubai and Stay There, which had become quite popular. In about seven months, I wrote the section about Spain, then put the manuscript aside. I no longer had time for books, and it sat there for several years. TCA: What prompted you to return to the manuscript? Alina: The book is dedicated to my son Ander, who, sadly, passed away last year. In it, I write about the time when we found out we were going to become parents and have a son. That happened in Spain. It was important for me to reflect on that difficult period in my life. I decided to contact the same editor I'd worked with on How to Move to Dubai. I sent him the manuscript and suggested that if the publisher was interested, I would finish the book and we could publish it. If not, I wanted them to tell me right away. I decided that a positive response would give me the push to finally finish what I'd started. It would also give me a firm deadline. TCA: Was working on the book therapeutic for you in some way? Alina: In a sense, probably, yes. At the very least, it helped me look back at my journey in detail, feel grateful for it, and see how much my husband and I had been through together and how we'd supported each other. Besides, the book had been hanging over me as unfinished business all those years. I kept thinking about what I'd written, sitting in a drawer somewhere. If the publisher had turned it down, the manuscript would have stayed there. I wouldn't have had...