It is against this background that Russian film-maker Aleksey Fedorchenko—a documenter of folk cultures across the country and region through acclaimed narrative and documentary films—decided to take on the culture of the Meadow Mari. Across twenty-three short chapters, Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari presents a catalogue of Mari fairytales and folklore, depicting in painterly tableaux a culture driven by ritualistic appreciation for female beauty and feminine sexuality. Vibrant colours, breathtaking cinematography and a gentle sensibility strike a harmony between scenes variously tender and grotesque.

The chapters alternate between the everyday and the fantastical. In the first, we see a young woman praying to the Mother of Birth (depicted as a white fir tree) to take away her birthmarks, which she says makes her ugly. In others, we see grotesque creatures from the forest deep or women dancing nude, their bodies possessed by spirits. By the end of Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari we understand the film not as switching between the rote and the unusual, but the everyday and fantasy feeding into and off of each other, each necessary to depict this culture which is so alien from our own. — Herb Shellenberger