The film was partially filmed on location in Syria and in Turkey, representing a Turkish-Soviet cooperation in filmmaking. The film is based on one narrative strand within the novel The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years ("И дольше века длится день") by Chinghiz Aitmatov, a philosophical tale about what can happen to people if they forget their motherland, language, and history. The Turkic legend mentioned in the novel tells about a cruel way of making a mankurt of a captive man in the hopes that he will forget everything but basic activities and, thus, becomes an ideal slave of Djungar masters. The film is about a Turkmenian who defends his homeland from invasion. He is captured, tortured, and brainwashed into serving his homeland`s conquerors. He is so completely turned that he kills his mother when she attempts to rescue him from captivity.