Logline
The last yurt on the grassland is about to be moved; before leaving for the city, a girl does everything she can to keep an old horse.
Ulaantana's Holiday
Creative Statement
This is a coming-of-age story about a Mongolian girl who has to choose when her attachment to her homeland collides with her family's interests. Like a prose poem, calm and unhurried, it tells of the small episodes of daily life Tana goes through over one summer. The characters hope for different things from life, carry different burdens and choose different ways of living, but deep down they share an attachment to the past and to their native land. This is what moves me most in the story. My approach is naturalistic and character-led: quietly observing the subtle changes of feeling and state that the characters reveal in the trivia of daily life. The film will plainly show the innocence of children, the confusion of adults, the calm of the old, and the blend of poetry and life on the grassland. It is an elegy for a passing era, felt through a child's tender emotions, and conveys a sad, nostalgic mood to the audience.
Synopsis
In the summer holidays, Ulaantana, an eight-year-old Mongolian girl who goes to school in town, rushes back to the grassland she has been longing for. This summer is special for Tana: more people are leaving the nomadic life for the city, and the family of her best friend Chichig is moving away from the grassland too; her father has been taken into a detention centre for reasons she does not know, and the family is at a loss for how to raise money; her kind grandmother has taken a vow of silence for her spiritual practice and, though she asks nothing, sees everything clearly; her mother seems to have an ambiguous relationship with Buji, who collects the milk; the grandmother next door passes away quietly, the first death Tana has ever witnessed... What Tana finds hardest to accept is that her domineering uncle comes to the house, and she must choose between her father and the old horse she grew up with. Tana tries everything she can to keep the old horse, and to raise money so that her father can come home sooner. She even enters, on her own, a horse race usually ridden only by men. Tana tries everything she can to keep the old horse, and to raise money so that her father can come home sooner. She even enters, on her own, a horse race usually ridden only by men.
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Genre:
Children's, Drama, Ethnic -
Director:
Wang Kunlin
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Screenwriter:
Liu Xiaoyu -
Producer:
Shen Xiaoying