Review

Daava (Davaasuren Dagvasuren) and Zaya (Otgonzaya Dashzeveg) are a husband and wife who have carried on a generational tradition of livestock farming in the Gobi Desert region of Mongolia. They have a loving relationship where not only their children but also their livestock are like part of the family. But the family's lives are utterly upended by intense sandstorms that have arrived as a result of climate change. Unable to farm any longer, they decide to relocate to the city, taking up residence in a ger area on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar. As more and more people are driven to the city by situations that make it impossible to continue living a nomadic life, the situation has created environmental and hygienic issues, while the only jobs available offer poor conditions. Daava supports the family by operating an excavator on a construction site. This film adopts a hybrid format blending documentary with fiction. Australian director Gabrielle Brady uses the family's experience as a way to vividly capture the emotional rifts experienced by Mongolian nomads due to the effects of climate change and relocation to the city. The work is also unusual in that Daava and Zaya both acted in it and co-wrote the script. (CHUN Jinsu)

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