“ A Gift to Stalin ” is a film produced by Kazakhstan , Russia, Poland and Israel about the difficult fate of the little Jewish boy Sabyr (Sasha), who in 1949 ends up in Kazakhstan. Here he is saved from death by a Kazakh grandfather, who replaces his dead parents. The role of the elderly Sasha was played by the Israeli writer David Markish , whose memories formed the basis of the film.
| Gift to Stalin | |
|---|---|
| Staling | |
 | |
| Genre | Historical Drama |
| Producer | Rustem Abdrashev |
| Producer | Boris Cherdabaev, Alia Uvalzhanova |
| Author script | Pavel Finn |
| In the main cast | Nurzhuman Ikhtymbaev Ekaterina Rednikova Bakhtiyar Leather Dalen Shentimirov |
| Operator | Hassan Kydyraliev |
| Composer | Kuat Shildebaev |
| Film company | Aldongar Productions |
| Duration | 97 minutes |
| Budget | $ 2 million |
| A country | Kazakhstan , Russia , Poland , Israel |
| Tongue | |
| Year | 2008 |
| IMDb | ID 1305027 |
The film won the grand prix of the first 9th international film festival “East & West. Classic and Vanguard ”, opened the 13th Busan Film Festival in Korea , and a draft version of this film was shown at the Berlin and Cannes film festivals. “We chose this film because it is very unusual: there is a terrific, humane story, and a great play of actors, and steppe romance. Our viewers are not familiar with Kazakhstan cinema. This is what attracted us, ”commented Kim Dong Ho, director general of the Busan International Film Festival. Purchased in the video archive by the Library of Congress.
Content
Story
Kazakhstan, 1949 A new wave of repression - executions and deportation . Seventieth anniversary of Stalin . The main character - a Jewish orphan boy Sasha (Sabyr) - travels with his grandfather to Kazakhstan in a carriage for deportees. On the way, grandfather dies, and the baby himself never for a minute ceases to think about the arrested parents. He does not suspect that they are no longer alive. Upon arrival in a deaf Kazakh village, Sasha is saved from death by a lineman Kasym, a lonely old man who lost his wife and children during the famine and was shell-shocked at the front . He lives in a house next to the beautiful Vera - a former prisoner of ALZHIR , the exiled Polish doctor Jerzy, Dunganin Fata.
The appearance of a boy brightens up their harsh everyday life. Reality is cruel; empowered people are heartless. But in this aul, Sasha finds family and friends. Now he calls Kasym “ata”, which means “grandfather”, begins to speak Kazakh , sings Kazakh songs. The shaman, who performed the rite of returning the boy to life, gave him a middle name - Sabyr ( Kaz. Patient ).
One day, Sabyr sees in the newspaper an article about the anniversary of Stalin. All Soviet children want to give the leader the best birthday present. Sasha, however, believes that his “surprise”, his beloved lamb Boiling Water (as he called it), will help return his parents. But soon there is a wedding of Jerzy and Verka, to which the drunken district police officer Balgabay comes, and during a fight with Balgabay, Jerzy dies. After his death, someone kills Balgabay. On suspicion of murder, a gang of street children , who had a gun, was found, and a Kazakh guy whose beloved was raped by Balgabay was arrested. Sasha / Sabyr himself could have entered the list of “suspects” if Kasym hadn’t sent him by train to Odessa, to his relatives. Before leaving, Kasim gives Sasha a photograph of his parents, on the back of which were written the addresses of his relatives, and an old prayer book of his grandfather; grandfather gave these things to Sasha before his death. By that time, a grand gift to Stalin had already been prepared. It was the test of the first Soviet atomic bomb , which took place on August 29, 1949 near the village where Sasha, Kasym and other characters in the film lived.
After many years, approximately at the present time, having made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem , he makes another “pilgrimage”, to another holy place for him — to that very village (more precisely, to the place where that village stood, since after the nuclear the explosion, neither from him nor from its inhabitants, there was practically nothing left but memorial plates on the graves), which forever remained in his memory.
Cast
- Dalen Shintemirov - Sasha
- Ekaterina Rednikova - Verka
- Nurzhuman Ikhtymbaev - Kasym
- Alexander Bashirov - MGB Major
- Bakhtiyar Leather - Balgabay
- Valdemar Shchepanyak - Jerzy Dombrowski
- David Markish - adult Sasha
- Kasym Zhakibaev - a shaman
- Asel Sadvakasova - Kazakh girl
- Leyla Salmenova - Kazakh girl (read Abay’s poems at the end of the film)
See also
- Repression in the Kazakh SSR