The Gift to Stalin (Kazakhstan/Poland/Russia/Israel, 2008)

Directed by Rustem Abdrashev

In a small Kazakh village in 1949, a young boy, assumed to be dead, is put off a train carrying Russian Jews to Stalin’s relocation camps. Adopted by an elderly rail-worker, the boy learns of a campaign soliciting children’s birthday gifts to Stalin, and imagines that a wondrous gift might win his parents’ freedom. But tragedy awaits his new family and community, again at the dictator’s hand.

Aldongar Productions. Producer: Boris Cherdabayev, Aliya Uvalzhanova. Screenwriter: Pavel Finn. Cinematographer: Kadirjan Kidiraliev. Editor:  Sylvain Coutandin, Gaziz Nasirov. Cast: Nurjuman Ikhtimbayev, Dalen Shintemirov, Ekaterina Rednikova, Bakhtiar Khoja, Waldemar Szczepaniak.

35mm, color, in Russian, Kazakh and Hebrew with English subtitles, 95 min.