Apples of the Year Forty-One (1969)

A 1969 Uzbekfilm production directed by Ravil Batyrov from a script by Dmitry Kholendro, based on his own novella. An elderly teahouse keeper tells Anvar, a film-school student, how in the winter of 1941 he and other elderly collective-farm workers took a trainload of apples to the front. Anvar doubts the story, but finds a familiar face in wartime newsreel footage and sets out to learn the truth. On the journey the old men get to know the country, and they give the apples to Russian and Georgian soldiers.