I understood only much later what these women were whispering about. It was all about opium, how to steal it without being caught by the police and sell it to smugglers, so to make ends meet; how to bring it home hiding it in one's hair, beneath the underwear, in the cradle of a baby, or on animals. At the time when I was born, opium production had become illegal a decade before, and the Soviet Union was about to disintegrate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To make a film about opium was for me a way to explore and understand what the Soviet intense cultivation on our Kyrgyz lands during the 1940s - 1960s meant for us, where it came from, and why we all still suffer from some kind of moral and social intoxication. Against the backdrop of my memories and those of family members, I have sought testimonies from former opium farmers of our Issyk-Kul Region, smugglers and contrabandists, members of the police and the medical profession. I felt that there was an urgency to interview all these people and to listen to them while they were still alive. By confronting their stories to Soviet archival footage, photos, and documents, some of which were "secret" before the Soviet Union dissolved, I came to understand what happened to our Zher ene, our mother-earth and its inhabitants, brutally cut off of their nomadic existence by forced Soviet collectivization, the aftermath of which is still part of today's troubled existence of our country. I realized that I too was one of the "children of opium."