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The Light Thief

2010 film by Aktan Abdykalykov

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ7747267
Source-derived summary

The Light Thief (Kyrgyz: Свет-аке, Svet-Ake) is a 2010 Kyrgyzstani drama film directed by Aktan Arym Kubat. The film was Kyrgyzstan's submission for Best Foreign Language Film for the 83rd Academy Awards, but did not make the final shortlist.

Cast

Aktan Arym Kubat as Svet-Ake

Taalaikan Abazova as Bermet

Askat Sulaimanov as Bekzat

Asan Amanov as Esen

Stanbek Toichubaev as Mansur

Plot

Our main character Svet-Ake, or Mr. Light, is the local electrician in an extremely impoverished, underfunded Kyrgyz town. He tries his best to be the man of the people who, in a robin hood fashion, manipulates the electric meters for those who cannot afford to pay for their electricity. Even with this, he sees that more and more townspeople are leaving the town in search of better jobs, threatening the town's tradition and way of life.

Svet-Ake is a humble and humorous man, however, this may be his undoing. When Bezkat, a businessman, comes to Svet-Ake's town, he promises to fund Svet-ake's windmills and modernize the valleys if he works for him. However, Bezkat is corrupt and tries to manipulate the local government and becomes the mayor. Svet-Ake soon realizes that Bezkat's work is destroying the very land and tradition he so dearly wanted to protect.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Light Thief” is 2010 film by Aktan Abdykalykov. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Light, Thief and film, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2010—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—2010-01-01, 2011-04-14—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. For this dossier, Light, Thief and film is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “2010 film by Aktan Abdykalykov” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7747267. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Light Thief”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Light Thief primary sources, The Light Thief archive and Light research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Light Thief”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from The Light Thief” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.