Weeping Camel, The

Aroview: A lovingly filmed and touchingly simple excursion into the lives of a family of nomadic shepherds in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, which blurs the line between fiction and documentary.

Framed around efforts to get a mother camel to suckle its newborn offspring whom it has rejected, possibly because it has a rare white colouration, this also serves as a thoughtful ethnographic document of the transformation of a way of life in the modern world. Eventually the nomads resort to the hope that a traditional musician will be able to magically lull matters back into balance, and two young boys set out across the desert for help... (Note: Amazingly, this is the debut effort of the dir.s who submitted it as their graduation piece for film-school in Germany.)

NZ International Film Festival 2004

more matches…