Ivan syn Amira

My wife's family were sent to Uzbekistan in the same period as this film: many of them kids with their parents executed, and sent on alone. The various branches of her family that wound up there were from all over the western parts of the Soviet Union, but could more or less be described as Slavs. She has always talked about how it was to be a Russian growing up there, amongst the Uzbeks and the panoply of other races that were sent out there. This film beautifully encapsulates what some of the sentiment must have been of those who arrived there. Though the film does not itself depict Tashkent, one can imagine the lives of those who did arrive there and how it would be coloured by their experiences of the rural hinterland.