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Adventures of Ali-Baba and the Forty Thieves (film)

1980 film by Umesh Mehra

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ780428 ↗
Source-derived summary

Adventures of Ali-Baba and the Forty Thieves (Hindi: Alibaba aur 40 Chor; Russian: Приключения Али-Бабы и сорока разбойников, romanized: Priklucheniya Ali-Baby i soroka razboynikov) is a 1980 Indo-Soviet fantasy film based on the Arabian Nights story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. The film is a joint directorial effort between India's Umesh Mehra and the Soviet Union's Latif Faiziev.

The film stars Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Zeenat Aman, Yoqub Ahmedov, Rolan Bykov, Sofiko Chiaureli, Elena Sanayeva, and Zakir Mukhamedzhanov. The storyline is slightly altered to extend as a long movie. The writers are Shanti Prakash Bakshi and Boris Saakov.

The background score of the film is composed by Vladimir Milov and the music for the songs is composed by R.D. Burman. The choreographers of the film are Leonid Travitsky and Peter Pereira. It was the most successful Indian-Soviet co-production, becoming a success in both India and the Soviet Union.

Plot

Alibaba, a poor man, lives in the fictional town of Gulabad, somewhere in Central Asia, with his mother and elder brother Qasim, who owns a small shop. Ali's father, Yousuf, is a merchant in a distant land and has not returned to Gulabad since leaving shortly after Ali's birth.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Adventures of Ali-Baba and the Forty Thieves (film)” as 1980 film by Umesh Mehra. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Adventures, Ali-Baba and Forty.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1980—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1980-05-29, 1980-05-30—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Adventures, Ali-Baba and Forty providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Adventures of Ali-Baba and the Forty Thieves (film)”, the useful work is to connect “1980 film by Umesh Mehra” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q780428. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1980.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Adventures of Ali-Baba and the Forty Thieves (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.