I don’t know if the film industry in Mongolia is extensive, but there is at least a one-person film industry there: director Byambasuren Savaa. Her first feature, “The Story of the Weeping Camel,” came out of nowhere to snag an Oscar nomination.
The camel movie was an enchanting ethnographic film, with nonprofessional performers, close attention to old customs and remarkable location shooting in the empty steppes of Mongolia. But it wasn’t just a “National Geographic” special. It was shaped by an artist.
Same goes for the director’s second film, “The Cave of the Yellow Dog.” We are back in the grasslands of Mongolia, where a nomadic family has pitched their yurt for the summer.
The small story here is actually a staple of Hollywood cinema: A little girl finds a dog and wants to keep him over the father’s objections. He’s afraid the dog could attract wolves, which have been thinning his herd of goats and sheep.
Mostly, the film examines the ways of life out in the middle of nowhere: the making of cheese, the tending of goats, the way a yurt is broken down to move as the family prepares to travel again.
We note how the incursion of modern life, such as a plastic ladle and (ironically) a mechanical toy dog, seem especially jarring in this ancient setting. But Savaa doesn’t push the differences too hard.
Instead, she lets the land do the talking – the film is full of gorgeously photographed vistas of endless horizons. She understands sound, too. When the father skins a sheep, we know exactly what the process sounds like.
Savaa attended film school in Munich, and she used a German crew (including some fellow students) to make this film. Although it was made on a low budget, it looks better on a technical level than many Hollywood movies.
Nobody steals the show in quite the same way the camels did in her previous film, but the real-life family that “plays” the nomads here is terrific. Their actions are authentic, and the children clearly go “off script” and do their own thing once in a while, to winning effect. Who needs camels, anyway?
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