Young Maxim grows up under the czarist regime with his grandparents as guardians. Continually demeaned by his martinet grandfather, Maxim is drawn to his warm-hearted grandmother, who instills in him the willingness to pursue his writing muse.
This remarkable film is based on P. Bazhov’s fairy tale “The Malachite Box”. Little Danila was the most inquisitive apprentice of old Prokopich, a famous stone-carving master. Years passed… Like his teacher, the grown-up Danila has learned to feel the soul of his material and became an expert in handling rare precious stones found in the Ural Mountains. One day he met the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, a fairy who ordered for herself an unusual stone flower.
The story, a Communist re-telling of Gulliver's Travels, is about a young boy who dreams of himself as a version of Gulliver who has landed in Lilliput suffering under capitalist inequality and exploitation.
