Khadak (2006)

Producers and writers Peter Brosens and Jessica Hope Woodworth combine bleak realism and artistic surrealism in this film set on the frigid Mongolian steppe. The teenager Bagi and his family are nomadic herders who are forcibly relocated by the government under the ruse of a plague. They are resettled in a grimy mining town where monster machines gash coal from the earth, dilapidated high rises loom out of the barren landscape, and steamy smoke belches from every chimney. As a youngster on the Mongolian steppe, Bagi had seizures. A shamaness in the desert interpreted this as a spiritual gift; in the government hospital, doctors in white coats called it epilepsy. In Bagi's clairvoyance and premonitions, time, space and relations get rearranged in a collision of worldviews that is both literal and deeply figurative. Khadak has earned awards from Sundance, Venice, and Toronto film festivals. In Mongolian with English subtitles.