Zulfikar Musakov

Абдулладжан, или Посвящается Стивену Спилбергу

Zulfikar Musakov

Rudzhab Adashev, Tuychi Aripov

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.

Kichkina Tabib

Zulfikar Musakov

Murad Radzhabov, Dilshodbek Kattabekov

Doniyor has the supernatural power to heal seriously ill people with incurable pain. Thanks to his ability, not a single sick person remained in his village. Shuhrat Shodmonov, a big businessman from Tashkent, comes to him and asks him to treat his granddaughter.

Abdullajon

Zulfikar Musakov

The film is narrated in the first person through the eyes of Sotiboldi, a security guard at a store in the village, as a letter to "Steven aka (Brother) Spielberg" in broken, but funny Russian. The film tells the story of an alien whose spaceship crashes in an Uzbek kolhoz. Bozorboy, a resident of the village, discovers the alien while looking for his lost cow. In his letter to Spielberg, Sotiboldi writes that the spaceship that crashed in Uzbekistan, "unlike the beautiful spaceship with lights in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, looks like a pot, but is real."

Osmondagi Bolalar

Zulfikar Musakov

Nozim To'laho'jayev

The film follows the lives of four upper-class teenage boys in Tashkent, Uzbekistan including the shy son of a famous film director, a chubby cut-up, son of a rich and successful businessman, and a tough aspiring playwright who works after school to avoid his raging alcoholic of a father. The four all live in the same housing complex and go to the same high school, where they fall for a beautiful, tough-as-nails new female student. Within the exotic locale of Uzbekistan, the boys experience the usual "growing pains" as they fall in love, "borrow" the family car, work hard to earn extra money and have too much to drink. A funny, touching slice-of-life comedy-drama.

History of a Soldier

Zulfikar Musakov

Directed by Zulfikar Musakov.