In a city well lit and dotted with numerous hilltop communication masts, we meet the young "Ulzii" (Battsooj Uurtsaikh) who is living quite a contrasting existence with his mother and three siblings in a yurt than has an one-ring electric cooker and a coal burning stove. He is a gifted physics student whose teacher (Batzorig Sukhbaatar) is trying to coax him to enter a competition and focus more on his studies, but it's increasingly clear that this young man is very much the breadwinner. His recently widowed mother reverts to the bottle when things get tough and yearns to return to the rural, herding, life she had lived before marriage. Their's is a tempestuous relationship, and when things come to an head she takes their youngest away, whilst he and the elder children remain to keep up with their schooling. What follows now sees young "Ulzii" forced to make tough choices as he must reconcile the needs of his family with the time and effort he needs to put into his studies. A lack of coal, wood and a infection in his brother that he can't afford to medicate force him to take a path that addresses the immediacy of their needs but what of his future? I thought Uurtsaikh did well here, juggling the aspirations of a young boy who wanted to be just that, with his responsibilities as a de facto father. The actors portraying the siblings work well too, creating a sense of a family unit - they all share the same small bed - that does care for each other and all want to help. The conditions are bleak. Somehow the harsh cold always looks worse amidst an urban landscape where we are offered enough of a pretty stark comparison between even the most modest of city dwellings and his family's semi-rural existence on the outskirts. It is intense at times, but it is also quite funny too. Who knew the cure for a mouth ulcer involved a saddle-bit and a big toe? It is his younger brother who comes up with the idea of hibernating, and if I'd been there I think I would have agreed.
