In the 1960s, Polish director Andrzej Wajda made two features in Yugoslavia; he was supremely unhappy with both. The first of these, Siberian Lady Macbeth (translated for American distribution as Fury Is a Woman), is an ascetic adaptation of Nikolai Leskov’s novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1865), itself of course a remix of Shakespeare, as well as of Turgenev’s 1848 short story Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District. Wajda’s motivation for roaming south was pragmatic: “This was a film I had wanted to make in Poland, but in Poland we could make everything into a film except Russian literature, which was entirely reserved for Soviet directors … Polish cinema didn’t agree to the film, whereas in Yugoslavia at that time the Russian tradition was very strong.” Produced inexpensively by the Belgrade studio Avala with a local crew and celebrity cast, the result was a self-proclaimed failure on par with Gates to Paradise (1968), Wajda’s other Yugoslav “disaster.” After Sibirska ledi’s subpar reception, the auteur blamed himself for inadequately visualizing Leskov’s serial logic: “It was my fault. The entire film was meant to be a grim, endless procession of exiles among whom would be the heroes recalling their tragic fates. I rejected this idea even though it would have made a better and more interesting film … As it turns out, I am not satisfied. The film was neither Russian nor Polish nor Yugoslav, but something that had stopped in between.” Three elements, however, stood out to Wajda as satisfactory: Aca Sekulovic’s “wonderful photography,” Ljuba Tadic performing as Sergei, and the set decorations by Miomir Denic. “The film made me realize how difficult it is to adjust to a new and foreign reality. I understood that a little freedom abroad was not enough: I needed more freedom at home, in Poland.”