Once Upon a Time There Lived a Simple Woman (Russian: Жила-была одна баба, romanized: Zhila-byla odna baba) is a 2011 film directed and written by Andrey Smirnov.

[1] The film is divided into two parts, and begins and ends with images of a flooded village and church under water.

In the final scene of the movie, the entire village with people is flooded by water, apparently after destruction of a nearby dam, as an allegory to the Russian city of Kitezh.

Smirnov has stated that his intention in making the film was to show what really happened under Vladimir Lenin, who said he wanted to tackle the problem of "landlords and capitalists.

In reality, none of these classes suffered percentage wise as much as the two most hated by Lenin, the peasantry and clergy.