Sibirskiy tsiryulnik) is a 1998 Russian drama film that re-united the Academy Award-winning team of director, writer, producer and actor Nikita Mikhalkov, screenwriter Rustam Ibragimbekov and producer Michel Seydoux.

[2][3] Jane Callahan (Julia Ormond), a beautiful American lady, writes to her son, a cadet at a famous military academy, about a long kept secret.

Twenty years ago she arrived in Russia to assist Douglas McCracken (Richard Harris), an obsessive engineer who needs the Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich's patronage to sponsor his invention, a massive machine to harvest the Siberian forests.

On her travels, she meets two men who would change her life forever: a handsome young cadet Andrej Tolstoy (Oleg Menshikov) with whom she shares a fondness for opera, and the powerful General Radlov (Aleksei Petrenko) who is entranced by her beauty and wants to marry her.

She confides a deep secret to Tolstoy, promises to marry him, and together they spend a passionate night of love fathering her child.