In Arabic, “mameluke” means a white slave, a prisoner. In Egypt, this name was given to prisoners of war who had been sold into slavery from Georgia and other countries of the Caucasus. The action of this drama starts in Georgia in the late 18th century. Two friends are abducted and sold into slavery. One ends up in Egypt, the other - in Venice. Years later, they meet by the ancient pyramids, in the desert where a battle is going on between the armies of Bonaparte and Ali-bey, the ruler of Egypt. In a combat with a French officer, the Mameluke injures him. Falling from his horse onto the sand, the officer exclaims in Georgian: “Vai, nana!” (“Oh, mother!”). And the Mameluke recognizes in him a mate of his childhood games.
A biography of George Kastriot Skanderbeg widely known as Skanderbeg, a 15th-century Albanian lord who defended his land against the Ottoman Empire for more than two decades.
A World War II era Soviet war film, focusing on the role of the Red Navy rather than land forces, and reviving the 1920s concept of the collective hero.
Banned in the Soviet Union for its "negative" content and never released, Kalatozov was forced to retreat from filmmaking for seven years because of this film. The film sets out to illustrate the old adage, "For want of a nail, the battle was lost," showing how the inferior quality of something so trivial as a nail in a soldier's boot leads inexorably to the capture of an armored train. Kalatozov had intended to demonstrate the crucial and universal importance of efficiency in Soviet industry, but the government decided that his fable gave a negative impression of the Red Army's capabilities.
The protagonist, a lazy pen-pusher, gets the sack for his bureaucratic idleness, and learns that the way back into the job market depends on getting a letter of recommendation from a "grandmother"