An Afro-Asian film festival and writers’ conference was held in the Uzbek capital in 1958, turning Tashkent into a centre for South-South relations. Based on the festival’s slogan, ‘For peace, social progress, and the freedom of peoples’, the ideology of ‘friendship of peoples’ became a cornerstone of Soviet rhetoric. Zumrad Mirzalieva montages footage from newsreels about the festival to take a critical look at the promised friendship between peoples. In doing so, she is confronted with strict hierarchies.