Aikyn Kalykov

The film shows children from a village who play football for money

Amidst the plains of the Kazakhstan steppes lives a mother and Eldon, the youngest of her five grown-up children. Whilst his four siblings have all married and left home, he and his mother live a simple, traditional existence. However when Eldon announces he has met the love of his life, his mother embarks on a tour of her four other children's homes in search of money for the wedding. As we follow the lovable but demanding mum through the four very different lives, we get a heartwarming family comedy that brilliantly contrasts modern-day and traditional life in Kazakhstan with humor and insight.

Tanabay is a proud Kazakh war hero and loyal Communist who is pressured into taking a position as a herdsman in a collective farm in the Stalinist era after WWII. The pride and joy of the collective is a beautiful stallion named Gulsary. After Gulsary wins a race, the new commissar of the collective lays claim to the beloved and headstrong horse, which leads to a battle of a wills. Tanabay and Gulsary are both punished and separated for their refusal to bend to the rules of the Stalinist era.

Story of a rough little boy in Kazakh society in the last years of the USSR, owes something to the Italian neo realist movement of the 1940s.

Left without parents, having gone through hardships and hardships, Kasym ends up in a boarding school, where he learns true friendship and becomes a marksman. Growing up, he falls in love, goes through exploits and betrayal during the Great Patriotic War. A "thread" from the past helps him to keep a person in himself, which connects him with the roots of the family and the values of his ancestors.