It’s over 20 years since a Mongolian film has had a UK release. That was The Story of the Weeping Camel, a gentle doc about nomadic herders as settled life and modern communications are beginning to encroach. Purevdash’s debut feature takes a nomad family into the city, to a yurt pitched on the outskirts of smoky, sooty Ulaanbaatar. The father has died. The mother, illiterate and struggling with drink, can’t earn enough to support her four children. Ulzii, the oldest, feels responsible.
He earns a little from chores around the neighbourhood, and is angry with his mother because of her drinking. When she decides to return to the steppe, he refuses to go. He’s at school, and he wants to be a scientist. His teacher has entered him for a physics competition, with a possible scholarship to a prestigious American university.
