BBC

RENAISSANCE DIRECTORS APPROACH
RENAISSANCE is a drama based on the true story of the most devastating calamity of the world history; the Aral disaster… Despite the damaging geographic conditions of the mid-Asia, the Aral Sea, the “Blue Eye of the Desert” vitalized the region for centuries. Amu Deria and Siri Deria carried large amounts of water to the Aral Sea for hundreds of years… Following the 2nd World War, Joseph Stalin pushed the button for “The Regained Lands Project” to create a generous savanna on Karakum and Kizilkum deserts. The water of Amu Deria and Syr Deria was transferred to these deserts via huge channels for irrigation. Production of cotton also known as “white gold” in the mid asia deserts increased the prosperity of the area. This economic prosperity resulted with the victory of Soviets in a short time. However a tiny detail was forgotten: the natural balance…This underestimated tiny detail triggered the most tragic environmental disaster of the history. The system’s unsatisfied greediness compromised the waters of Aral in order to produce more cotton on the desert. As Aral’s both arms are amputated the amount of water decreased each year. On the other hand, due to over irrigation, salt came up to the surface of the ground in time and burned the cotton. Moscow could not risk the decrease of the cotton production and an enormous amount of chemical fertilizer was spread onto the fields from the air. The decrease in the production of cotton was prevented, but the chemicals leaked to Aral via underground rivers. While Aral was shrinking through the surface, chemicals were poisoning her profoundly. Aral fell out and dried up, leaving a poisonous desert behind.

Yet, this was not the end of the tragedy. The sweeping Mid Asia wind raised the poisonous salt that was left behind and pour it out like a rain onto the region… Now there is neither a sea, nor cotton only a desert that empoisons every single living thing… Since the mid 1980s, every child out of ten that was born around Aral died. The unidentified mortal diseases were spread out, the rate of anemia reached 90%. The rate of skin cancer, lung cancer, larynx cancer and the others were at the highest morbidity.

While Aral Sea was dramatically shrinking year by year, on Vozrojdenia (Rennaissance) island, in the middle of her, Soviet regime was busy with the production of a terrible weapon: Anthrax virus… Starting from 1948, a top-secret Soviet biological weapon laboratory was producing anthrax virus on this secluded Vozrojdenia island to kill innocent people in a massacre. 99% of the employee of the laboratory was unaware of what they were working for. In the early 90’s, one night following an explosion, a fire set off, causing the micro killers to invade the island. What happened to the inhabitants of the island is still a mystery…

This mysterious situation provoked the script writer, Mustafa Altioklar, to imagine what might have happened on this “cursed island” and he constructed a fiction and named it as; “RENNAISANCE”…

According to his fiction, Moscow didn’t want either the world public, or her own people to be aware of this biological weapon production. So they decided to annihilate the both effected and unaffected habitants of the island at a time. However, instead of annihilating them, Moscow created a new project and decided to use the habitants as guinea pigs. This accident gave an opportunity to observe anthrax’s effects on infected people “in vivo” conditions, thus to produce the antidote.

Consequently, to prevent inflow and outflow from Vozrojdenia, a troop of Red Army sent to the island to take the control. The system surrounded the laboratory campus with barbed wires and installed landmines all around the island and an absolute isolation was obtained immediately. The habitants of the island were enslaved and condemned to death…

One Year Later, after the communist regime collapsed and Kazakhstan freed from Russia. The unattendant restricted area was claimed by the undisciplened ex Red army soldiers… The ex KGB agents were not late to start a new trade by selling the ex Red Army’s weapons to the terrorists of the world. One of the meeting points of this illegal trade was our cursed island Vozrojdenia. Therefore a new life was formed on the island by the traders and the ex-red army soldiers that captured the island… and for their customers they provide a “test-drive” for the weapons in trade: the man hunting party…

A party, in which the already enslaved inhabitants would be the prays and they had only one chance to get out of the island; man hunt on the mine field… The person who joins the hunt and survives could take his family and leave the island. The film “RENNAISSANCE” begins right at this point. The protagonist of the film; Batu Khan joins the hunt to rescue his beloved wife Nazar, and his 5 year old sick son Bilal and his enslaved suffering people… Though he makes it out of the minefield without stepping on a main or being killed by the man hunters… Satay shoots Batu Kahn down to death despite his promise to let Batu Khan and his family to get out of the island. Meanwhile a documentary film crew made of a German director who is the grandgrandson of a Volgadeutschen , a German anchor and a Turkish cameraman, who explore the German colonization in Kazakhstan come across Batu Khan, who is at the edge of death… A chain of events that unravels the secrets of the island transpires after the film crew takes Batu Khan to the nearest hospital. As the film crew dives into the secrets of the area we meet a Volgadeutschen surgeon in the verge of nihilism, and a Semey victim, Quasimodo with a huge hunchback a shaman and his supernatural powers and a goddess who has lost both of her arms to rescue Kipchak from a mine explosion once, and after all she became a dependant sex toy for him and a fantasy subject for weapon traders after their hunting parties. All of these above mentioned interfering characters and some others tell us the story of Aral Sea and Vozrojdenia Island in flashbacks and the story proceeds as the fight of Batu Khan and the film crew against very heavy odds becomes harder and harder and ends up with the salvage of innocent people who are condemned to death…

This project has the obvective of contrubuting the prevention of similar disasters which threatens our only and beloved planet, with the help of cinema’s fascinating charm in dramatized set up, before they occur.

OBJECTIVE OF THE PROJECT
The project has the obvective of contrubuting the prevention of similar disasters which threatens our only and beloved planet, with the help of cinema’s fascinating charm in dramatized set up, before they occur.

SYNOPSIS
Renaissance is a drama about Batu Khan, who fights against heavy odds to rescue his beloved wife and people who are enslaved and condemned to death on an isolated island in the middle of the dried Aral Sea. As Batu Khan manages to escape from the island, this threatens the secrets to come to light, so he must be wiped off. Batu Khan faces a dilemma, saving his people or sacrificing his own life.