A more literal translation of the film's title would be "Call Me Into the Shining Distance," but Shukshin's untimely death in 1974 renders the new title more appropriate. The script is his own and apparently one of a number of projects that he had intended to direct himself. Instead, the directorial credit is shared by two novices, the Moscow Art theater actor Stanislav Lyubshin and cinematographer Herman Lavrov. The film seems a jovial composite of two stories, one about a luckless suitor who sabotages his own courtship, and the other about a prankster cum matchmaker. However, in the central role of Grusha is Shukshin's wife, Lydia Fedoseyeva, playing a widow whose relatives are pushing her toward romance. As if in deference to the delicacy of her widowhood, directors Lyubshin and Lavrov bring her character to the fore, atypical in a Shukshin screenplay where the women usually provide a backdrop of security and stability. Call Me from Afar is an ironic comedy about Grusha's efforts to find a suitable husband. The "eligible" bachelor, in this case, is so chronically shy that he nearly bungles the first meeting between the two. Stirring up the potential for disaster is Grusha's son, a mischief-maker with a leery eye for strangers. The mise-en-scene of this film is a smoother, less edgy version of Shukshin's own concoctions. And as Ian Christie writes: "Instead of the staccato, highly elliptical phrasing of his own mature films, there is a more measured and theatrical approach. Call Me from Afar thus reminds us of what was distinctive and unique in Shukshin's own work, while providing a fitting tribute in a different register."