The comedic tale about the tensions between the younger and older generations became a hit with viewers and critics; it remains his best known work and is considered to be one of the best Uzbek films of all time.

The film tells the true story of a couple who adopted and raised fourteen orphaned children of different nationalities during the Great Patriotic War.

His film Tashkent Is a City of Bread (1968), from a semifictional novel by Aleksandr Neverov, set in 1921, tells the story of two peasant boys who are escaping the starved Russian countryside, hoping to find food in Central Asia.

Abbasov then helmed the large-scale, two part biopic Abu-Raikhan Beruni (1975), produced on the occasion of the 1,000th anniversary of the medieval scholar, and Fiery Paths (1977–1985), a biographical television miniseries about the life and tragic fate of Uzbek author Hamza Hakimzade Niyazi.

As a director, he also staged many plays, including Abdulla Qahhor's Ogʻriq tishlar (Hurting Teeth) and Komil Yashin's Nurxon.