When we were organizing the shoot, we knew that he had an amazing estate in Italy. And once there, we heard that Leonid had been inspired by the iconic Esalen Institute, which was founded by the American psychologist Michael Murphy (he was also the hero of our project “On the Way to the Teacher”). When we arrived at Incantico, we were stunned from the first minutes by how lovingly this space is organized, where groups and individual visitors can endlessly “taste” - explore, observe, notice new facets of themselves, connect with nature and with the world.

Besides Leonid, one of the heroines of the movie was Mamaka's director, Zhenya Lapteva, who agreed to work with the Master with the cameras on. From the very beginning it was noticeable that an invisible subtle connection, mutual understanding and some kind of reverence was building between her and Leonid, which resulted in a beautiful and touching session. Zhenya says that for her this work is about courage, about accepting her parts, about allowing herself to be different and just be.

Inspired by the session with Zhenya, Mamaka's producer Ksenia and cameraman Sergei also decided to work with the master. These episodes were not included in the full-length version of the movie, but we would like to share them separately, as they turned out to be no less interesting and inspiring.