A Bolshevik army officer and Uzbek who has been nursed back to health by a young Uzbek woman to whom he is now married, gains responsibility for the local village in 1929. He is urged by comrades in Tashkent to have the local women drop their chadors and veils but he is also told that he should not force this on anyone. His wife declines to take off her veil, so a 14 year old girl steps forward to set the example, over the objections of the local Muslim clergy and most of the village men. After the girl is killed, and the commissar is shot, his wife takes him to the hills to nurse him back to health once again. She begs her husband to leave the village. Instead when he decides to return, she is pressured by her father to continue to wear the veil.
The film takes place in Uzbekistan during the Great Patriotic War. Pulat and Bahor love each other, but the happiness of the heroes is prevented by a rich friend of the parents of a girl who sees her as her future wife.
Set in the rural village of White Storks, the story tackles the taboo subject of an extramarital affair. Strong-willed Malika, married but childless, is openly consorting with another man with whom she shares a seemingly tender bond.
Saib Akhmedzhanov
