Climbing the ‘Mountains’ : Making of Russia’s Oscar-nominated film proved to be a battle itself.

Since Sergei Bodrov’s “Prisoner of the Mountains,” an inspired transposition of a Tolstoy story to the Chechen conflict, won the jury and audience prizes at Cannes, it has gone on to become nominated for the best foreign language Oscar as Russia’s official entry. It is also almost certainly the only film to be screened in both Russia’s Parliament and, thanks to the recommendation of poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the Library of Congress.

“Prisoner of the Mountains,” an antiwar tale in which a young Russian soldier (Sergei Bodrov Jr.) becomes caught up in a risky prisoner exchange involving Chechens and Russians, opens Friday (at the Westside Pavilion, the Sunset 5 and the Town Center 4, South Coast Plaza). The film, being released by Orion, was No. 1 at the box office last summer in Russia, where it is still playing.

Bodrov said that at first he did not want to use his son, who is very affecting in the film, in the role of the Russian soldier.

“He was working as my assistant, and it was a last-minute decision because I couldn’t find a good young professional actor to play the role,” Bodrov said. “He has said that I was awful to work with and that he would never work with me again! I was tough with him, sometimes too much! Yes, I was happy with his work but worried what he would do next. But I’ve created a monster! He’s the star of ‘Look,’ the most popular TV show in Russia.”

Yet it is clear that Bodrov, 48, is proud of his son, 24, who holds degrees in art history from Moscow State University.

Slim and handsome enough to be a movie star himself, Bodrov talked while sitting in his backyard in Venice, Calif., where he and his wife, former San Francisco photographer Carolyn Cavallero, have lived for nearly three years (they divide their time between the United States and Russia).

The vivacious Cavallero, who is hoping to direct her own film, “Garden of Eden,” set in San Francisco in the late ‘60s, met Bodrov at the San Francisco Film Festival in 1990, where his “Freedom Is Paradise,” about a 13-year-old runaway, was shown. “Both of us were divorced, and we got married right away and went off to Moscow. I told her, ‘We don’t have time to get to know each other.’ ”

When independent filmmaker Alexandre Rockwell asked Bodrov to collaborate on the script for “Somebody to Love,” last year’s amusing and heart-tugging valentine to Rosie Perez, Bodrov decided that he should take his salary “to buy a piece of America.”

He said “Prisoner of the Mountains” is based on a 150-year-old story written for kids. “A few years ago, when I was a professor at the Moscow Film School I had a student, Boris Giller, who became a good businessman. He came to me and said, ‘I was thinking what a wonderful film this story would make.’ It’s a universal story.” Giller became the film’s co-producer and one of Bodrov’s collaborators on the script.

“I started to work with a Muslim, Arif Aliev, in 1994, because his point of view was important to me. Shooting was an amazing experience. We shot in a remote village, Arecha, in the tiny republic of Dagestan, along the border with Chechnya. In Dagestan, there are 36 Muslim nations speaking 36 different languages, and they don’t understand each other. It was two hours by foot from the nearest town. There was no plumbing, no running water, no Holiday Inn and electricity only sometimes.

“I think I got incredible stuff, but it was tough, maybe the most difficult film I ever made.” Bodrov risked coming to Arecha not having cast the pivotal role of a 12-year-old Muslim girl, with whom Bodrov Jr.’s soldier strikes up a friendship. “I knew I needed a local girl, she had to be of this culture--I couldn’t fake it.” There he discovered the remarkably poised little Susanna Mekhralieva.

Oddly enough, it was Mekhralieva who innocently became the cause of the one serious incident, near the end of shooting. “We had hired security people,” Bodrov said. “We were in a dangerous area, with drug trafficking and a war going on nearby. We had hired this group of professional wrestlers from the nearest town to Arecha--they are like world champions--and somebody told their leader that this wonderful 12-year-old girl was getting a little bit more money than he did--maybe $200 more. I paid my son $1,000, and I think I paid the girl the same.

“So this guy says, ‘You’re not leaving. You really insulted me. You paid her more.’ It was not about money but pride and honor. It was a 24-hour negotiation, back and forth, but I wasn’t scared. It did become a big scandal. It was half my fault, because you have to know the psychology and mentality of such situations.”

When Bodrov first read Tolstoy’s “Prisoner of the Caucasus,” he was being raised by his grandparents near Vladivostok. “I had a wonderful, unbelievable childhood,” he said. “I was so blessed. My grandparents were doctors, and my mother was off to medical school.”

He joined her and his stepfather in Moscow when he was 12. As an adult, he finally met his natural father, whom his mother divorced when Bodrov was 3 and whom he describes as “a great guy. He was this big, blond guy. He was a construction boss, a hard-working, 24-hours-around-the-clock tough, tough guy. Now that he’s retired, he writes poetry and goes to museums.” (Married three times himself, Bodrov has a 10-year-old daughter, studying music in Kazakstan.)

Bodrov currently has lots of projects in mind and said that “I think I have to make a Russian ‘Godfather,’ about the present-day Russian Mafia in America.”

Last year at the Salonika Film Festival, Bodrov participated in a press conference with Jan Sverak, director of the official Czech Oscar entry “Kolya,” and like “Prisoner of the Mountains,” a strong contender for the best foreign language film Academy Award. “Jan said, ‘I make my movies because I love them.’ I had the advantage of following him, so it was easy for me to say, ‘I make my movies because I don’t like them.’ But in a way it’s true: You know they always could be better.”

BE THERE

“Prisoner of the Mountains” opens Friday at the Samuel Goldwyn Cinemas, Westside Pavilion, West Los Angeles; Laemmle’s Sunset 5, West Hollywood; and the Town Center 4, South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa.