Zud

As bitter cold unexpectedly invades the plain, Nanook’s Mongol descendant Batsaikhan struggles to keep his herds alive, but the animals freeze to death one after the other. Faced with the hardship of providing for his family in such extreme conditions, he teaches Sukhbat, his eleven-year-old son, how to tame and ride a wild horse in order to win a race whose prize would save them from poverty. The film abruptly changes rhythm, ceases documenting the routine of daily life and switches to a frenetic pace that is as much the film’s as Sukhbat’s. Imagined at the time of editing, the fictional storyline twists the documentary material filmed over three successive years spent alongside these steppe nomads, to give it a form of a coming-of-age tale. (Raphaëlle Pireyre)