In 1990, he made his directorial debut with a 17-minute film "The Dog was Running" documentary (production of “Kyrgyzfilm” studio) co-authored with Erkin Ryspaev, and in 1992 he released his first feature film "Where is your home?." "The Swing", his second feature, a semi-autobiographical tale about the discovery of the world by an 11-year-old boy who is infatuated with an older girl, won the Grand Prize for the best short film at the Locarno Film Festival in the competition section for short films in 1993 and the FIPRESCI Prize at the Torino Film Festival. This event gave Aktan Arym Kubat an opportunity to meet his French producer Cédomir Kolar, who later became the main producer of his main films. Five years later in 1998 at the Locarno Film Festival he won a Silver Leopard for &lt;a href="Beshkempir%20%28film%29"&gt;"Beshkempir/The Adopted Son"&lt;/a&gt;, which also competed at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the East of the West Competition. In 2001 &lt;a href="The%20Chimp%20%282001%20film%29"&gt;"Maimyl/The Chimp"&lt;/a&gt; was selected to Un Certain Regard in Cannes and was nominated by the European Film Academy for the Discovery Award. "The Light Thief", in which Aktan Arym Kubat took the lead role, premiered at Director's Fortnight in Cannes, won numerous awards and was screened in many festivals such as Locarno, Toronto, Montreal, Viennale, Doha and others. In 2017 this experience in front of the camera had a great effect once again in "Centaur", which premiered in Berlinale’s Panorama section and won CICAE Award at Berlinale IFF, “Best Actor” award at Asian World Film Festival in USA and other prestigious awards.