After my first film, The Dove on the Roof, was banned, my second film was canceled a month before shooting began. The studio management then asked me to make the fairy-tale film The Blue Light-in other words, something absolutely "unthreatening"-to show that I was good at my job. In the meantime, rumors were circulating that I was incapable of making a film, something that people liked to believe about novice directors, especially a woman novice. For this reason, I agreed.