Short answers, pulled from the story.
The year 1970 marked the release of White Sun of the Desert, a Soviet film that defied standard genre expectations. This unique combination created what critics later called an Ostern or Eastern Western.
Director Vladimir Motyl took over the directorial chair after Andrei Tarkovsky and Andrei Konchalovsky had previously turned down the offer to direct the picture. Motyl initially refused the assignment but eventually accepted because he would receive no other directing opportunities.
Filming occurred across multiple locations including Luga near Leningrad Oblast and the Karakum Desert near Mary in Turkmenistan. Actors endured scorching heat while making large circles in sand dunes to avoid leaving telltale tracks during shooting sequences.
The film achieved massive popularity within the Soviet Union with 34.5 million viewers attending screenings in 1970 alone. It became one of the most popular movies ever produced in the country despite receiving no awards during the Soviet era.
Only in 1998 did President Boris Yeltsin issue a special decree awarding the creators the Russian Federation State Prize nearly thirty years after the film left theaters. The film was nominated for the 1970 USSR State Prize but lost to By the Lake which was seen as ideologically correct.