Johanna d’Arc of Mongolia

The film begins with a train journey. The passengers travel the Trans-Siberian line. Among them are women from different countries. Long conversations run through the carriage. Each of them carries her own world. Then the journey turns in an unexpected direction. The train is stopped. A Mongolian group takes the passengers. At its head is a princess named Ulan Iga. The women are taken out onto the steppe. A different order of life runs there. Tents, herds and custom enter the account. Here the film moves toward documentary. Fiction and observation fold into each other. Delphine Seyrig and Irm Hermann appear in the one hundred sixty five minute film, a French and German production Ulrike Ottinger finished in 1989.