Review: ‘Only Heaven Knows’
2025 / Dir. Nurzhamal Karamoldoeva
☆ 3.5/5
Watch if you like: the early work of Sean Baker and the Safdie brothers, Winter’s Bone, and caring about your neighbors if you live in Chicagoland.
Taking place within Chicago’s growing Kyrgyz immigrant community, Mira (Malika Kanatova) discovers her husband, Eric (Dauren Tashkenbaev) is a compulsive gambler after he disappears with the money they were going to use to put a down payment on a house. Shot locally in Chicagoland, Only Heaven Knows is an eye-opening journey into a group that most outside of it don’t know anything about, or even that they exist. Kyrgyz director Karamoldoeva—a documentarian making her first fictional film—doesn’t handhold the audience, carefully creating a portrait of a people in diaspora making sense of their traditional values and the possibilities of the new world, while still making sure to support each other despite their flaws. Mira’s quest to track down her husband could tighten the screws a bit to make it feel a little less listless. Still, the film does use this type of narrative structure uniquely, showcasing how a woman who has never given herself dreams outside of marriage begins to wake up to the possibilities without her husband.