This emotionally uplifting film in the tradition of Kolya and Nuovo Cinema Paradiso is set in rural Kazakhstan in 1949 (an area larger than Western Europe, and then a Soviet domain of enforced exiles and labour camps, as well as the site of its first nuclear test). It tells the story a young Jewish boy, Sashka, who is caught up in one of Stalin's many deportations from Moscow, but is rescued from a far-off region when he is found alive in a railroad car full of dead bodies by a gruff, Muslim railroad worker, Kasym. Adopted by Kasym's clan and renamed Sabyr, the city boy quickly adapts to his hosts' new customs, as well as the unfamiliar pastoral landscape. But with hopes of reuniting with his birth family fading, Sashka participates in a Soviet-wide competition celebrating Stalin's 70th birthday to win his parents' freedom. Narrated by Sashka, the film shifts from past to present, and from the stunning steppes of Kazakhstan to the old city of Jerusalem. Decades pass, and Sasha questions history and his fate: "Who are you in the land of your God if a part of your soul was left behind?" The film's allegorical ending will linger long in your heart and mind.