If Only I Could Hibernate

4/20/2024

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 wi