Gleb Panfilov

It's from 1970, and it's a film-within-a-film story in which a factory worker who moonlights as an actor is cast by a film director as the maid of Orléans, following her successful performance on stage as the Slavic folktale character Baba Yaga.

The film was made at Lenfilm Studio in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, and it was directed by Gleb Panfilov and it starred Ina Chirikova.

Chirikova and Panfilov were married and made many films together, and the pair died within seven months of each other in 2023.

According to Katriona Kelly in Soviet Art House, Pamfilov originally wanted to make a more straightforward historical biopic about Joan of Arc, but ended up tackling the subject indirectly after resistance from the studio.