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 young doctor serving cotton growers goes to the city. On the highway, when trying to overtake a motorcade, the traffic police stops the car. The events that take place next are an accurate and witty model of a life permeated through and through with absurd relationships, ridiculous demands and inexplicable prohibitions...

After his marriage, the young and talented Murad joined the institute, which was headed by his wife's uncle Yuldashev. The young designer soon realized that the pseudo-scientific activities of the institute were aimed only at improving Yuldashev's worthless projects. The hero rebelled — and was immediately fired. Having got a job as an adjuster at another company, the designer secretly continued to design until the end of the eighties.

About how a resident of one village suddenly found a bomb in his yard. The excited inhabitants of the village at first long determine what it is, and then what to do with it.

Crowded alleys of the evening park, music, laughter, festive fireworks. And the two are talking about murder or suicide, about the syringe found in the dead woman's hands, about the time when death occurred. These two are employees of the criminal investigation department. They will have to find criminals in a large, busy business city who stole, cheated, and, if necessary, did not stop at murder, removing unintended witnesses or unreliable accomplices from their path.

About the struggle of Uzbek women against the reactionary clergy in the 1920s.