Directing with wolves

Even for Jean Jacques Annaud, known for his animal films The Bear and Two Brothers, the making of Wolf Totem has been a real challenge.

The 71-year-old French director has spent the past four years in China, mostly in Beijing and the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, where he trained 35 wolves with Canadian trainer Andrew Simpson and longtime producer Xavier Castano.

The wolves are important characters in Wolf Totem, a film based on the Chinese bestseller of the same name by Jiang Rong. It traces two young men's experiences on the Inner Mongolian grasslands, especially their interactions with the wolves there. Penguin published the book's English edition in 2008.