Ali Baba (1973 film)
1973 Indian film

Ali Baba is a 1973 Bengali short animated film directed by Rohit Mohra. It is a musical drama about the character Ali Baba from the folk tale Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves who discovers the secret of a thieves' den, to the ire of the thieves. Ali Baba is a poor woodcutter who discovers the secret of a thieves' den, entered with the phrase "Open Sesame". The thieves learn of Ali Baba's discovery and try to kill him, but Ali Baba's faithful slave-girl foils their plots. Ali Baba gives his son to her in marriage and keeps the secret of the treasure.
Plot
Ali Baba and his elder brother Cassim are the sons of a merchant. After the death of their father, the greedy Cassim marries a wealthy woman and becomes well-to-do, building on their father's business. Ali Baba marries a poor woman and settles into the trade of a woodcutter.
One day, Ali Baba is at work collecting and cutting firewood in the forest, when he happens to overhear a group of forty thieves visiting their treasure store. The treasure is in a cave, the mouth of which is sealed by magic.
The public source identifies “Ali Baba (1973 film)” as 1973 Indian film. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Baba, film and Indian.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18398162. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ali Baba (1973 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.