The Beginning

Pasha Stroganova works in a factory in a provincial town and nobody notices her. She takes the part of Baba Yaga in the amateur theatre. A director visiting the town sees her there and makes her an unbelievable offer: she is to play Joan of Arc. Pasha falls all at once into another life. On one side there is the shoot and the part; on the other, her love for a married man, which is not returned. It is Gleb Panfilov's second film and one of the parts Inna Churikova is most remembered for; Churikova became the director's wife and they worked together on most of his later films. The film folds two layers into each other: the Joan of Arc scenes and Pasha's everyday life. Both tell the same thing, a woman being made to fit a life that is not her own. Ninety-one minutes. The ending is not a triumph but a quiet return.