Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov
Sailor Marat carries a great burden. His whole village condemns him since his wife and many fishermen were washed off his boat in a mysterious sea storm. Ever since then the sea has vanished. One day, Marat returns to his village, obsessed by the idea of making the sea return and so the dead. He begins rebuilding his shipwreck in the middle of the desert, dragging it towards the endless horizon. Only his last close friend Balthasar, and Tamara, the sister of Marat's deceased wife, believe in him. Tamara, deeply in love with Marat, who repulses her, knows from a fortune teller that maybe not her dream but his might come true. One morning Marat wakes up by the sound of water - the sea has returned, ready to take what belongs to her...
The unborn child of Mamlakat is telling her story. She is 17, beautiful and vivacious, and dreaming secretly of becoming an actress. She lives with her father and brother in a small village in Central Asia. One night she is seduced by an actor from a travelling troupe, who poses as a friend of Tom Cruise, and makes her pregnant. She tries to abort, but her father and brother become determined to find the seducer, setting in motion a cascade of comic adventures.
This movie was filmed during a civil war between Islamic funamentalists and everyone else in the newly independent country of Tadjikistan, which is near Pakistan and Afghanistan. The constant presence of sounds of gunfire and, in night scenes, the additional illumination by tracer bullets, adds urgency and another layer of feeling to this fairly conventional romance. In the story, Mira (Paolina Galves) has just returned home to Dushanbe from Russia to visit her father (Bokhodur Dzhurabaev), a wastrel who is completely addicted to a local gambling game called "odds and evens," or Kosh Ba Kosh. Even though he has no power over her, he recently wagered (and lost) her in a game of odds and evens. Meanwhile, she has met a cable car operator (Daler Madzhidov) with whom she forms a relationship.
