Hellion — "Shum bola", a film on the eponymous story of Gafur Gulyam about the adventures of a little boy, whose restless character makes him different people and life situations.
Beautifully shot in black and white, and scripted by Tarkovsky's collaborator Andrei Konchalovsky, this powerful melodrama tells the story of a young boy who undertakes the perilous journey to Uzbekistan's capital Tashkent, to earn some money for his hungry family. Filming in the periphery of the Soviet Union, in a time of relative political relaxation, director Shukhrat Abbasov actually dared to depict the poverty and famine that resulted from the Bolshevik Revolution.
The film is a touching story about an Uzbek family who gave shelter to 14 kids evacuated during the World War II while their own child was at the battlefronts.
The events in Mahallada duv-duv gap occur in a mahalla — a traditional Uzbek neighborhood — in an old part of Tashkent at a time when big-scale construction works are taking place. The movie humorously depicts the relationships between traditional parents and their modern children.
