A cop investigates horrific incidents at a maternity clinic in the remote village of Karatas but is soon swept up by the area’s dark folklore. Together with a delinquent, occult-adjacent seer, he stumbles on the curse of Albasty, a spirit with a penchant for newborns. Kazakh Scary Tales is a powerful Central Asian grotesquerie that plays out against the backdrop of dusty steppes and high-contrast characters with an undercurrent of brute humor and dry wit. Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s folk horror was originally shot as a three-part miniseries that has yet to air, as test audiences deemed it too disturbing. (Markus Keuschnigg)