Sicko (Fantasia Film Festival 2026)

Here in the UK, and across much of the developed world, we’re in the middle of a cost‑of‑living crisis, with people drowning under bills, rent and debt. The sheer exhaustion of trying to stay afloat begs the question of how far someone would go to escape that pressure – something that Kazakh filmmaker Aitore Zholdaskali throws at us in Sicko (Auru), which makes its North American premiere at Fantasia 2026.

Married couple Ayan Utepbergen (Aza), and Tansho (Dilnaz Kurmangali), are buckling under the weight of debt and suffering the effects, the film opening with Aza nearly crashing his taxi before picking a fight with his passenger. He’s terrible at his job, owes money to his mother, and is deep in debt to his “only friend in town”. After being beaten for failing to repay what he owes and desperate for a cigarette, he stumbles into a shop where an altercation winds up with him stealing the charity donation box. Cornered and panicking, he blurts out a lie that will define the film – his wife has cancer – and from there Sicko becomes a study in how things can snowball when desperation meets opportunity.

There’s a long tradition of dark comedies built around a lie that spirals out of control and Sicko fits neatly into that lineage. The “too far” moment arrives early in the story, when Aza and Tansho decide to imitate stage‑three cancer symptoms, study how sufferers look, and record a social‑media campaign video to solicit donations. It’s already reprehensible, but writers Kazybek Orazbek and Aldiyar Zhaparkhanov push things further – the video goes viral, and Kazakh media embraces the couple as tragic young lovers who want to start a family but have been dealt a brutal hand. Donations pour in, sympathy pours in, the lie grows, and the escalation is steady and grimly funny – until it isn’t. Their debts mount, the attention intensifies, Tansho’s moral compass starts to buckle under the weight of what they’ve done, and as ever with this kind of story, big money attracts the wrong kind of interest. Zholdaskali keeps tightening the screws until the film hits a point of no return, shifting from casually violent dark comedy into something far more severe, and I feel a content warning is necessary here. The final act contains extreme domestic conflict that some viewers will find deeply distressing, and what makes the ending so provocative isn’t the violence itself, but the aftermath. The fallout lands unevenly as the person most responsible for the chaos faces far fewer consequences, and the film leans into that imbalance with intent – a choice that will divide viewers, some seeing it as a bleakly honest depiction of how the world works, and others as a step too far.

CLICK THE POSTER AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE FOR MORE ON SICKO AND FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL

Even with that severity the film’s escalation is compelling, Zholdaskali maintaining a careful balance between the nervous anticipation of waiting for the bubble to burst, and the darkly entertaining momentum. It’s reminiscent of the impossibly bleak comedies that defined the Korean New Wave, and like those provocateurs, Zholdaskali pushes boundaries with a fearlessness that makes the title Sicko feel entirely apt. The tonal shift is harsh, and will lose some viewers who aren’t accustomed to the more extreme edges of genre cinema, beginning as it does like one of the darker comedies you might see on BBC Two or Channel 4, and ending somewhere closer to Von Trier, Kim Ki‑duk, or the pitch‑black cruelty of The Coffee Table (2022).

Sicko doesn’t shy away from the ugliness of its characters or their choices, but it also refuses to offer the catharsis of justice, and while those third‑act developments are undeniably strong, but the film is also anchored by two committed performances. Ayan Utepbergen is excellent, and consistently unlikeable as Aza (the titular sicko), especially as playing an irredeemable character is a challenge for any actor, and roles like this are rare precisely because they demand such unflinching commitment. Opposite him is Dilnaz Kurmangali, who brings humanity and empathy to Tansho and grounds the film even as her character is dragged into moral freefall. Their dynamic works both in the moment‑to‑moment storytelling and in the more physically demanding sequences later on.

The film’s only real weaknesses are in occasional stretches where the script lingers too long on a single note, and while you could argue that these awkwardly extended scenes are intentional (a reflection of the characters’ inability to escape the mess they’ve created), it doesn’t always land. The pacing slips from tense to repetitive at times, and although it’s not enough to derail the film, it does blunt the impact of the otherwise razor‑sharp escalation. Sicko stands as a strong example of the fearlessness emerging from the burgeoning Kazakh film scene, but whether its material suits your sensibilities is the real dividing line. Some will respect the level of social provocation (generous comparisons to Parasite have already been made), while others will find the film’s extremes (especially in its final act), to be in deeply bad taste – but that’s the nature of work that’s designed to provoke, unsettle, and ask uncomfortable questions about the cost of survival.

ROB’S ARCHIVE – SICKO (2026)