AllMovie

The events just before, during and after World War II have little direct effect on the inhabitants of the village in Georgia where Zuriko lives. A schoolboy, Zuriko goes to the schoolhouse with his previously unlettered grandmother, who is receiving an education alongside him. He has some loyal, if slightly addled friends in the person of a myopic hunter named Illarion, and a one-eyed man named Illiko. So nearsighted is Illarion that on one occasion he shot Zuriko's dog because the took it for a rabbit. The loyalty of his friends is proven after the war, when they sell the cow they all own in order to send Zuriko to college in Tblisi. This black and white film is notable for several things: its loving portrayal of the Georgian country people and countryside, and the fact that it was made by Tenghiz Abuladze, who went on to make the extremely significant, award-winning 1984 film Monanieba, also known as Pokayaniye, or Repentance.