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In this semi-documentary shot in the Gobi Desert, filmmakers Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni spend a few days with an extended family of shepherds. When a camel rejects her newborn colt, the two young boys are dispatched to bring back a Buddhist monk to perform a musical ritual to reunite the camel and her offspring. This deceptively simple story with its prosaic dramas proves wholly engaging. There is no soundtrack, but only the constant whoosh of the wind across the empty horizon, the bleating of the livestock and the lullabies crooned to soothe both babe and beast. The dozen non-professional actors are wonderfully accessible, however remote their lifestyle seems (a slender thread throughout comments on the increasing encroachment of modern Western life), and truly, the troubles of two camels made me a little teary. In Mongolian with subtitles. Squirrel Hill 
This article appears in Jul 15-21, 2004.
