Appealing film about several young people who grew up in Kazachstan in the Stalin era. Kazachstan was like Siberia in Stalin’s Soviet Union: misfits were sent there. There were even several Japanese prisoners of war. ‘The town was like Babylon. You could hear lots of languages there, Kazach, Russian, Japanese… It was a kind of microcosm.’ Many of the fathers of the children in this film were also arrested, many of their friends died, many mothers are lonely. Nevertheless childhood remains childhood, a time of love. Director Satibaldi Narymbetov stresses that the film is autobiographical and that he himself is the young accordion player from the title. That may be why the film radiates such extraordinary human warmth.
