DAYSHIFT by Zéré Turlykhanova | USA | 2026

Duration: 00:03:05

While cleaning a pole dance studio, a middle-aged woman drifts from routine into reverie.

Dayshift drifts through the quiet rhythms of an ordinary workday as a middle-aged cleaning woman tends to a pole dance studio after hours. Moving through the empty space, routine slowly gives way to reverie, as fragments of memory, desire, and curiosity begin to surface.

DIRECTOR : Zéré Turlykhanova

CONTACTS / LINKS : @zere_trl

Director’s statement
The film considers aging within a practice often associated with youth, asking what remains when desire outlives the systems that once defined it. It is also interested in movement as embodied knowledge: instinctive, lived-in, and chosen rather than performed out of obligation. At its core, the film is guided by curiosity — not as a problem-solving mechanism, but as a force to return to again and again.

This was my first experience shooting on Super 8, filmed entirely on a single roll of Kodak Ektachrome with no backups. Pole dancing rarely exists within this format, and the tactile intimacy of analog film felt uniquely suited to the physicality of the movements.

The footage was developed on an autopsy table (a dream setup, if you ask me), then dried and edited entirely by hand. Working this way brought me back to the bones of filmmaking: trust, restraint, and surrender to the moment as it unfolds. The process fundamentally reshaped my relationship to cinema.

The project was later shared in an intimate friends-and-family screening at The Museum of Modern Art, made possible through support from MONO and the New York State Council on the Arts. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who helped bring Dayshift into the world, including Sara Joel (whom I found through Reddit), Moby’s license-free sound library, and the community continuing to champion analog filmmaking.

Bio
Zéré Turlykhanova is a Central Asian director, producer, and screenwriter born in Almaty and raised between Dubai, Lugano, and New York. She studied psychology at NYU, where patient-therapist case studies began to resemble screenplays, sparking her interest in storytelling.

She began her career in market research, collaborating with both major and independent studios to help shape and position distinctive films. That experience continues to inform her work behind the camera.

Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Sara Joel, a multidisciplinary performance artist working across dance, film, and pole art. She was an original cast member of Cirque du Soleil’s Zumanity and conceived and performed in the underwater film Rapt, which premiered at Lincoln Center’s Dance on Camera Festival.

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