An experience of a lifetime – that is what it was for Indian actress Tannishtha Chatterjee who shot for Joe Wright’s “Anna Karenina” in a village in Russia, becoming the only Indian to have ever shot in temperatures of minus 40 degrees. 

Chatterjee is shooting for the film in a town called Petrozadodsk, which is 500 kilometers north of St. Petersburg. The town is actually an island on a lake called the Kizhi Island. The lake, one of the biggest in the world, is completely frozen at this time of the year and the temperatures range between -30 and -50 degrees.

Said the actor in a press release for this achievement, ”It’s a surreal experience. Everything turns into ice within seconds. People in this village do not drink water – they cannot because it turns into ice. It’s colder than the freezer in our refrigerators. The sun rises at around 10 a.m. and sets by 4 p.m. Naked skin gets frozen within seconds. In some of the pictures, I have just exposed my lips and nose for the photo, which have to be covered immediately after. How we have been shooting is such conditions is a miracle!”

Tannishtha has a shot on a sledge, and the wind was strong, but even then she had to expose her face at least.  She was given foot and hand warmers — small pouches with some sand and chemicals in it that when get really hot when you move.

For the actor, it was a revelation of how people live fighting nature, in a seemingly different planet!