''The Gift to Stalin'' is a 2008 joint Kazakhstani/Russian/Polish/Israeli film by

Kazakhfilm Kazakhfilm ( kk, Қазақфильм, ''Qazaqfilm'', pronounced ; russian: Казахфильм) is a Kazakh film studio located in Almaty, Kazakhstan. History The film studio was founded in 1934 as the Alma-Ata newsreel studio, in 1936 the fir ...

that tells the story of a little Jewish boy named Sasha who is sent to

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...

. He is saved from death by an old Kazakh man, Kasym, who takes the boy into his home. The film is set in 1949 and is based on the memoirs of

Russian Jewish The history of the Jews in Russia and areas historically connected with it goes back at least 1,500 years. Jews in Russia have historically constituted a large religious and ethnic diaspora; the Russian Empire at one time hosted the largest pop ...

writer

David Markish David Markish (russian: Давид Маркиш, he, דוד מרקיש), is an Israeli prose writer, poet and translator who writes predominantly in Russian. Life David Markish was born in 1938 in Moscow, the Soviet Union to the famous Jewish p ...

, also portrayed in his trilogy ''A New World for Simon Ashkenazy''. The title, ''The Gift to Stalin'', has two meanings. The first one Sasha’s dream He hopes that if he gives Stalin a gift, he will be able to see his parents again, not knowing that they have been killed. The second context is that in 1949 the Soviet government carried out a nuclear test (

RDS-1 The RDS-1 (russian: РДС-1), also known as Izdeliye 501 (device 501) and First Lightning (), was the nuclear bomb used in the Soviet Union's first nuclear weapon test. The United States assigned it the code-name Joe-1, in reference to Joseph S ...

) on

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...

’s 70th anniversary.During Stalin's life, his official birth year was 1879. When Sasha visited his Kazakh ''

aul An aul (; ce, oil; russian: аул) is a type of fortified village or town found throughout the Caucasus mountains and Soviet Central Asia, Central Asia. The word itself is of Turkic origin and simply means ''village'' in many Turkic language ...

'' many years later, he found it destroyed by the nuclear explosion.

Awards

*2009: Grand Prix at the Busan International Film Festival *2009:Three awards at the

Warsaw Jewish Film Festival The Warsaw Jewish Film Festival ( pl, Warszawski Festiwal Filmów o Tematyce Żydowskiej) is an annual Jewish film festival held in Warsaw, Poland. Organized in 2003 by American film director , it was the first one of this type on Poland, and one ...

, Grand Prix, the best full feature, and best actor (Dalen Shintemirov) "2009 Nagrody i honorowe"
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Notes

References

External links

* 2000s Russian-language films 2008 films 2008 drama films Films about Jews and Judaism Films set in 1949 Films about Joseph Stalin {{2000s-drama-film-stub