Bukharian Community Stage Actress Mira Aronbaeva Cast in Short Film About a Samarkand Caregiver

Mira Aronbaeva, a well-known actress with the Bukharian community theaters Vozrozhdenie and Bukhara-on-Hudson, has acted in a new short film by young director Zumrad Mirzalieva, The Bukharian Times reported Sept. 24, 2026.

Aronbaeva said Bukharian Times editor Rafael Nektalov called and suggested she contact the director, who was looking for an actress to play a Bukharian Jewish woman. The film follows a young émigré from Samarkand who works as a home attendant and, in the story, cares for Aronbaeva’s character. “We met with Zumrad in Queens and did the first screen tests,” Aronbaeva said.

The story of “Toy”

The short film, titled “Toy,” tells the story of Farangiz, an immigrant from Samarkand living in Brighton Beach. All day she prepares in her mind for an event taking place six thousand miles away: filling out expense paperwork, setting the table, cooking a festive meal, dressing up and rehearsing a speech, while the elderly woman she cares for, Zara, shouts instructions from the couch. When the moment she has lived for finally arrives, something goes wrong.

Mirzalieva, a Tashkent native who now lives in New York, said she graduated from the University of Manchester in 2020 in international crisis management and humanitarian response, works with international organizations and also makes documentaries; her debut film premiered in 2022 at the Go Viral festival. She won a grant in England for the project, the paper reported.

“When I met Mira, I understood from the first seconds that she is the heroine of my film,” Mirzalieva said. She said the meeting “opened the world of the Bukharian Jewish women of New York” for her. Aronbaeva, a former teacher, began acting in dramatic and comic character roles with the two community theaters after immigrating.

Nektalov noted that weddings among immigrants are a frequent theme of Bukharian theater in New York and Israel. The film’s release is planned for 2027, and Nektalov said it would be shown in New York after completion.

This report was translated from Russian by Bukharian Jewish Post from coverage by The Bukharian Times.

Sources: The Bukharian Times.