Khusan Musabayev

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.

A high-crime investigator goes to the scene where corruption and crime have taken on new and sophisticated forms in the mountainous southern region of the country. Under the guise of a random train robbery, individual cars loaded with waste from metallurgical production - and essentially enriched gold ore - are stolen. The kidnappers have all the means at their disposal. They mercilessly kill those who try to stop them from stealing tons of gold...