Highway (1999)

Synopsis
Following up on the international success of his previous film Paradise, Sergey Dvortsevoy directs this look at a hardscrabble, traveling family-circus. Performing in remote roadstops on the Kazakh plain, the Tajibadev family's act includes the eldest son clutching a 32-kilogram weight in his teeth as his father strikes it with a large hammer, toddlers walking on broken glass, and the rest of the brood performing an array of acrobatics. When the family of eight are not scraping for roadside rubles, they are making their way, in a rickety hand-cranked bus, to Uzbekistan, where the temperature promises to be cooler and the audiences larger. Along the way, they discover an injured eaglet, which soon becomes a part of the family. This film was screened at the 1999 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide