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.