Khodzhiakbar Nurmatov

Considering that Musakov’s Abdulladzhan (1991) was dedicated to Steven Spielberg, we might suggest that these four boys embody nothing more complicated than a conflict of youthful innocence with some ominous threat—the basic workings of E.T. (1982) or War of the Worlds (2005), say. That threat, however, is best understood not through vague nationalism or warmed-over socialism, but through the other reference-point of Abdulladzhan—Tarkovskii’s Stalker (1980). Musakov leaves his boys in a simplified radiance so bright and so overexposed that it no longer looks like the skies of sunny Tashkent, but a disturbing, borderless luminosity to match the flat tonal range of Stalker’s “Zone.” Our Uzbek boys are nowhere in particular; this is a broader domain than anything international.

Tashkent, 1942. At this time, the hospitable city became a refuge for tens of thousands of people tired of hunger and cold war years. In urban stores, warehouses and markets in abundance of food and other goods. All this attracts the attention of criminals of different stripes, who in search of easy money gathered in Tashkent from all over the vast country. There are several criminal groups here. At the beginning of summer in the city there is a new gang operating with special impudence and cruelty…