Old Khottabych
1957 film by Gennady Kazansky
Starik Khottabych (Russian: Старик Хоттабыч, Old Man Khottabych or Old Khottabych) is a Sovcolor Soviet fantasy film produced in the Soviet Union by Goskino at Kinostudiya Lenfilm (Lenfilm Studio) in 1956, based on a children's fairytale novel with the same title by Lazar Lagin who also wrote the film's script, and directed by Gennadi Kazansky. In the United States, the film was released theatrically by Sovexportfilm, with English subtitles, under the title The Flying Carpet through Artkino Pictures in 1960.
Plot summary
Volka, a 12-year-old Soviet Young Pioneer, discovers an ancient vessel at the bottom of a river. When he opens it, a genie emerges. He calls himself Hassan Abdurrahman ibn Khottab, but Volka renames him Khottabych. The name Khottabych is derived from the Arabic name Khattab with the Russian patronymic suffix -ych, yielding a Russian equivalent of ibn-Khottab (son of Khottab). Khottabych later claims to be 3,732 years and 5 months old. The grateful Khottabych is ready to fulfill any of Volka's wishes, but it becomes clear that Volka should use the powers of the genie carefully, for they can have some unforeseen undesirable results.
Cast
Nikolay Volkov as Hassan Abdurrahman ibn Khottab ("Old Khottabych") which is the name of a jinn (kind of non bad spirit)
Alexey Litvinov as Volka Kostylkov (Volka ibn Alyosha)
Genya Khudyskov as Zhenya - Volka's friend
Lyova Kovalychuk as Goga Pilyukin (Goga-Pilyulya ("pill" in Russian) - young boy who verbally spreads news on the street
Maya Blinova as Volka's Mother
Vera Romanova as Glafira Kuzminichna - Goga's Mother
Olga Cherkasova as Varvara Stepanovna - school class leader
Efim Kopelyan as Emir Mukhammdov : drilling master from Baku (capital of Azerbaijan Republic)
Aleksandr Larikov as doctor
Evgeniy Vesnik as militiaman
Zinaida Sharko as woman who sold ice cream in a circus
Production personnel
Production director: Tamara Samoznaeva
Producer: Lev Makhtin
Screenplay by Lazar Lagin
Directed by Gennadi Kazansky
Cinematographer: Muzakir Shuruckov
Art directors: Isaak Kaplan, Bella Manevich
Composer: Nadezhda Simonyan
Sound operator: Grigory Albert
Special effects team:
Director of photography: Mihail Shamkovich
Camera operators: B. Durov, M. Pocrovsky
Art directors: A. Alekseyev, Mihail Krotkin, Maria Kandat
Production notes
The novel is influenced by the tale of Aladdin and his magical lamp, and it was quite popular with Soviet kids. There were two major versions of the novel - the original was published in 1938, and a revised version followed in 1955.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Old Khottabych” is 1957 film by Gennady Kazansky. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Khottabych, film and Gennady, not as a finished interpretation.
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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 Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4439873. None of the 4 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1956, 1960, 1938 and 1955.
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This entry incorporates text from “Old Khottabych” 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.