The White Sun of the Desert

The White Sun of the Desert

1969 · 83 min · ★ 7.2 · Action, Drama, Adventure, War

The setting is the east shore of the Caspian Sea (today's Turkmenistan) where the Red Army soldier Fyodor Sukhov has been fighting the Civil War in Russian Asia for a number of years. After being hospitalised and then demobbed, he sets off home to join his wife, only to be caught up in a desert fight between a Red Army cavalry unit and Basmachi guerrillas. The cavalry unit commander, Rahimov, "convinces" Sukhov to help, temporarily, with the protection of abandoned women of the Basmachi guerrilla leader Abdullah's harem. Leaving a young Red Army soldier, Petrukha, to assist Sukhov with the task, Rahimov and his cavalry unit set out to pursue fleeing Abdullah.Sukhov and women from Abdullah's harem return to a nearby shore town. Soon, looking for a seaway across the border, Abdullah and his gang come to the same town...

Directed by Vladimir Motyl · Written by Valentin Ezhov

Your Rating

Where to Watch

Rent or Buy

Cast

Anatoliy Kuznetsov Sukhov
Pavel Luspekayev Vereshchagin
Spartak Mishulin Said
Kakhi Kavsadze Abdulla
Raisa Kurkina Nastasya
Nikolai Godovikov Petrukha
Tatyana Fedotova Gulchatai
Musa Dudayev Rakhimov
Nikolai Badyev Lebedev
Vladimir Kadochnikov Semyon
Galina Luchai Катерина Матвеевна, жена Сухова
Svetlana Slivinskaya Саида, старшая жена Абдуллы

Make it a double feature

2h 48m together

The White Sun of the Desert

Eugene, Little Eugene and Katyusha

Both from Vladimir Motyl.

More from Vladimir MotylSee all →

Children of the Pamirs

Children of the Pamirs · 1963

Children of the Pamirs

The action takes place in the early 20s in a mountainous village in the Pamirs, where people live in almost primitive poverty and scarcity. A detachment of Red Army soldiers comes here. The commander tells the residents that from now on they will live according to the laws of the Soviet government. The squad soon leaves, leaving only one person. He organizes a school for the children and becomes its first teacher. For the first time, children see the globe and learn that the earth is round. And they are learning to read and write for the first time... Based on Mirsaid Mirshakar's poem "Lenin in the Pamirs".

The Forest

The Forest · 1980

MovieComedyDrama

The heroine of the film, Mrs. Gurmyzhskaya, is a former beauty who is living out her days in a remote province. Her nephew, a high school dropout, comes to visit her at her estate, and the hostess, out of boredom, decides to have an affair with him... He willingly responds to his rich aunt's advances. Based on a play by A. N. Ostrovsky.

Wait for Letters

Wait for Letters · 1960

Wait for Letters

A group of young people comes to a Siberian construction site. They form a brigade, one of their tasks being cutting of a track for a power line. Different reasons made these people go to taiga and become pathfinders. One of them, a former taxi-driver Leonid (A.Kuznetsov) went to earn lots of money, Rimma (A.Zavialova) from the undivided love, the yesterdays schoolboy Constantine to find romantic appeal and adventures, and Vladimir (N.Dovzhenko) attempting to escape his shadowy past. Far away from the city fuss, in severe labor conditions and unsettled way of life, relations of these absolutely unknown to each other people gradually resume the normal course. Here many of them experience revaluation of values, others even find their love.

Let's Part - While We're Good

Let's Part - While We're Good · 1991

Let's Part - While We're Good

MovieActionAdventure

"Let us part - while we‘re good," Bagrat says to the peasants who have sheltered him, bleeding, from his pursuers. Let's part before any of you betray me... Love and hatred, meanness and courage, betrayal and self-sacrifice - everything that a romantic, adventurous plot requires (and that is also found in everyday life!).

Eugene, Little Eugene and Katyusha

Eugene, Little Eugene and Katyusha · 1967

Eugene, Little Eugene and Katyusha

MovieComedyRomance

War, 1944. Soldier Zhenya Kolyshkin, a fragile intellectual from Arbat, sets out on New Year's Eve to collect a parcel, but stumbles upon a German dugout. He manages to escape, but guard duty is inevitable. Zhenya's predicament is brightened by Zhenechka, a communications officer in the Katyusha regiment.

For Better and for Worse

For Better and for Worse · 1975

For Better and for Worse

MovieDramaRomance

In December 1825, distinguished members of the Russian military, most of whom were quite affluent and of noble lineage, took it upon themselves to stir revolution against the autocratic and tyrannical Czar Nikolai I in the wake of his not honoring the drafting of a constitution for the Russian people. The revolution failed miserably and the conspirators (known as the Decembrists) were weeded out by the czar himself. One by one, each of the conspirators confess and are systematically exiled to the harsh winters of Siberia, slated to work and wither in a prison/mine. The wives of the conspirators are faced with the prospect of leaving the bosom of wealth and family (including their own children) to be with their husbands in the brutal Siberian locale. If they agree to this, they face having their illustrious social stations stripped away and certain disdain from everyone around them...

Incredible Bet, or True Event That Ended Happily Hundred Years Ago

Incredible Bet, or True Event That Ended Happily Hundred Years Ago · 1984

Incredible Bet, or True Event That Ended Happily Hundred Years Ago

MovieComedyTV Movie

A young student and a rich banker make a bet for two million rubles. On the condition of the wager, the student was to spend 15 years in solitary confinement.

Long Live Shishlov

Long Live Shishlov · 1987

Long Live Shishlov

A story of a young man participating in a building of kolkhoz in Russia during the twenties.

Gone with the Horses

Gone with the Horses · 1997

Gone with the Horses

Student Ivan falls in love with Nadia, the wife of a rich businessman. The passion that has engulfed them prompts Nadia to leave her husband, and Ivan to give up his prestigious lawyer job in Moscow.

Where Are You, Bagira?

Where Are You, Bagira? · 1977

Where Are You, Bagira?

MovieFamilyDrama

A family movie about a friendship between girl and dog.

Crimson Color of Snowfall

Crimson Color of Snowfall · 2009

Crimson Color of Snowfall

MovieDramaHistory

A young girl Kseniya becomes a nurse in the Russian Army during the WWI.

Dodgy

An escaped prisoner, breaking the laws of hospitality, kills the dog of a boy whose grandfather gave him shelter. He placed a sharp piece of metal in a piece of meat. The police arrived and shot the dog. The boy grew into a small, pitiful, absurd, side-eyed man, who froze his genital organs while rescuing a dog, unable to have children, which his wife complains about very much. He works as a driver. While transporting a white piano from the collective farm to the club, he turns off the road so as not to run over the sheep, and the car falls into the river. A white puppy follows him everywhere and creepy and funny stories constantly happen. But he lives his dreams, writes poetry, his only friends are dogs - he gets kicked out of work, his wife leaves him. The real trouble comes - war.

I Have the Honor

I Have the Honor · 1987

I Have the Honor

Gendarmes arrest Vyacheslav, a free-thinking student. His friend Kirill gives his word of honor that he will release Vyacheslav from the dungeons of the Okhrana, but for this he will have to create a combat squad and engage in a deadly battle with the Black Hundreds - ruthless supporters of the monarchy.

Time of Taiga Snowdrop

Time of Taiga Snowdrop · 1959

Time of Taiga Snowdrop

The first months after the October Revolution. A small Red Army detachment stops at the Aksai farmstead, thereby causing discord in the family. Old Aksai treats his daughter-in-law Dinseme and her little brother Abido like slaves. But the Red Army soldiers treat them very differently. For the first time, a sense of dignity awakens in their souls. Meanwhile, Dynseme's husband, Gylik, together with another White Guard soldier from Ataman Semenov's gang, learns that the Red Army detachment is about to continue on its way and prepares a plan to destroy it.

More Like This

1911

MovieAdventureDrama

China's first President Sun Yat-Sen and military commander Huang Xing lead the revolutionary Wuchang Uprising in a bid to put an end to the reign of the Qing Dynasty.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen · 2012

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

MovieDramaRomance

A fisheries expert is approached by a consultant to help realize a sheik's vision of bringing the sport of fly-fishing to the desert and embarks on an upstream journey of faith and fish to prove the impossible possible.

Sahara

MovieAdventureAnimation

A young cobra and his scorpion best friend go on a journey across the Sahara desert to save a new-found love.

Smokey and the Bandit II

Smokey and the Bandit II · 1980

Smokey and the Bandit II

MovieActionComedy

The Bandit goes on another cross-country run, transporting an elephant from Florida to Texas. And, once again, Sheriff Buford T. Justice is on his tail.

Deathwatch

Deathwatch · 2002

MovieDramaHorror

In the brutal trench fighting of the First World War, a British Infantry Company is separated from their regiment after a fierce battle. Attempting to return to their lines, the British soldiers discover what appears to be a bombed out German trench, abandoned except for a few dazed German soldiers. After killing most of the Germans, and taking one prisoner, the British company fortifies to hold the trench until reinforcements can arrive. Soon, however, strange things being to happen as a sense of evil descends on the trench and the British begin turn on each other.

El Topo

El Topo · 1970

MovieAdventureDrama

El Topo decides to confront warrior Masters on a trans-formative desert journey he begins with his 6 year old son, who must bury his childhood totems to become a man.

Rate this film

Your ratings make Midnight smarter