Year: 2009
Director: Byambasuren Davaa
Country: Mongolia
Language: Mongolian
Byambasuren Davaa is a Mongolian director that I'd bet most people are fairly unfamiliar with. I certainly didn't know about her until MUBI. Her feature films The Story of the Weeping Camel (2003) and The Cave of the Yellow Dog (2005) were well recieved on the film festival circuit and have earned the acclaim of critics world-wide. Two Horses of Gengis Khan proved equally alluring,
Urna returns to her home country of Mongolia to find her grandmother's horse head violin, which holds the missing verses of an ancient melody.
Two Horses of Genghis Khan is an odd hybrid of fiction and reality. It's considered a documentary, but defies traditional aspects of it, feeling full of imagination. I truley have never seen a film made this way. It's both intimate and epic; being both a familial detective story and a sweeping picture about the legacy of the Mongolian peoples.
Davaa highlights a culture that is largely forgotten about by the West. When is the last time you've heard a news story from Mongolia? She shows her people as proud, their music as mesmerizing and their landscape as awe-inspiring. Three Horses of Genghis Khan is a tremendous achievement in recording the beauty of Mongola.
A remarkable picture, I can't wait to view Davaa's previous work and possibly see her next feature as soon as it is completed. Musician Urna Chahar-Tugchi’s journey across Mongolia proves really enticing for foreigners who would like to visit that part of the world.
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