Vein of the World

Original title: Die Adern der Welt
Genre: Family drama
Director: Byambasuren Davaa
Country: Mongolia, Germany
Year of production: 2020
Czas: 96 min

Awards and nominations:
2021 Mongolian submission to the Academy Award
2021 German Film Awards: Outstanding Children or Youth Film
2021 International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights: Fiction Grand Award, Youth Jury - Fiction

Present-day Mongolia. 11-year-old Amra Erdene lives with his parents and sister in a yurt on the steppe. Every day his father takes him to school in a self-made red cabriolet with a Mercedes logo attached to it. The family earns their living selling sheep milk cheeses. They live a modest life but they’re happy. The musically talented teenager dreams of participating in “Mongolia’s Got Talent” for which eliminations are soon taking place in his town. The family’s quiet life is ruined by an expansion of the mining industry. Semilegal mobile mines wander across the steppe in search of gold. They devastate nomads’ farms by preventing them from grazing cattle and pushing them away from their fathers’ land. Amra’s father, the leader of the community, tries to stop it. On the day of the talent show eliminations a tragedy happens. From now on the boy’s life won’t be the same. He’ll have to learn about adult problems, make choices against his own wishes, feel responsibility for people dearest to him, and get to know his own cultural identity.
A debut feature from a recognised documentarist Byambasuren Davaa takes viewers to a world unknown to Western societies with its closeness to nature and tradition, vibrant community, and battle between good and evil. A quasi-documentary texture of imagery, toned down and moving acting, a breathtaking beauty of Mongolian landscape, and a real tragedy of nomads being forced to resettle made the film, which premiered in Berlin, a Mongolian submission to the Academy Award.  

Author: Anna Rembowska

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Byambasuren Davaa – a Mongolian director living in Germany; a graduate of University of Television and Film in Munich. Author of awarded documentaries: “The Story of the Weeping Camel” (2003), “The Cave of the Yellow Dog” (2006), and “Two Horses of Genghis Khan” (2009).