One of the best recent Soviet films directed by a woman, Jamilya is a product of the Khirghiz Studio in Soviet Central Asia, and is based on a story by the noted author Chinghiz Aitmatov (one of whose stories inspired the modern Soviet classic, The First Teacher, see Wednesday, May 6). Set against a background of World War II, Jamilya tells the story of a Khirghiz bride of convenience who falls in love with a wounded soldier while her husband is at the front. The narrator is a young boy who records the whole episode in his drawings. Director Irina Poplavskaya calls Jamilya “the story of the birth of a painter in a child.... In fact there are two themes in the film - daily life during the war and the problem of artistic creation. My task was to describe the meeting point between life and art.”