The production of this film was really challenging. There was no definite location for filming this story in the script. The story was supposed to happen in the Middle Asia.
It is a story of middle aged woman, Baira, living in a village who's husband decided to take another wife - much younger and pregnant. Baira leaves the village tourmented by her jealousy and tries to find the solution for her problem in a big city.
For making this film we checked different locations - Almaty in Kazakhstan, Volgograd in Russia. In these places we were organizing castings in the theatres. And finally we've found the best place in a Respublic Kalmykia in Russia.
From the production point of view this film was complicated because we had to work around 1 month of production in the steppe. The dust storms were spoiling the equipment and carrying it in the steppe from the set. We had to protect ourselves from ticks that were everywhere around. Besides there were several scenes with lighting with helium balloons and organizing the logistics of these balloons was quite complicated.
We had animals on the set - hawks, herd of horses and camels.
But the final result was a very human and touching story of love.
I was acting in this film as a Production Manager, Behind the Scenes Cameraman and Photographer.
Related photogalleries:
http://leramulina.com/portfolio-item/film-elder-wife-portraits-kalmykia
http://leramulina.com/portfolio-item/film-elder-wife-behind-scenes