The film is a highly fictionalised narrative of how Saint Alexius healed Taydula Khatun, the mother of the Golden Horde khan Jani Beg, from blindness.

Alexius is reluctant but Ivan sees this as a rare opportunity to delay the inevitable Tatar attack on Moscow.

Eventually, Alexius accepts and, accompanied by Jani Beg's retainers Timer (Fedot Lvov) and Badakyul (Aleksey Yegorov), travels to Saray-Jük with his keleynik Fedka (Aleksandr Yatsenko).

The filmmakers considered Karachay-Balkar to be the living language most closely resembling Kipchak spoken by the 14th century Golden Horde.

[2] Nevertheless, none of the actors of Turkic extraction are native speakers of the language; Dakayarov, Lvov, and Yegorov are Yakuts, whereas Hairullina is Volga Tatar.