Mongol

Tadanobu Asano is Temudjin, the man who would become the great Genghis Khan. Now why would anyone cast a Japanese as the greatest Mongol is a mystery. This film focuses on his early life as a slave and his struggle to rise and unite the Mongols. Temudjin is portrayed as compassionate and is yet to turn into the bloody Khan. A film that was expected to be bloody given the central character in question, but it turned out to be comparitively mellow. Hopefully that will be taken care of in the sequel to the film.

Rating: * *

Khadak

A magic realism tale set in contemporary Mongolia has a young shepherd Bagi (Batzul Khayankhyarvaa) at its center. Supposed to posses powers bequeath to him by his ancestors, he finds them manifesting itself even stronger in the mining village his family is uprooted to from their rural yurt. A lot of this is thanks to a beautiful coal thief (Tsetsegee Byamba) whom he literally finds buried like a diamond in a coal heap. A mythical story that is so abstract that I found it hard to keep my mind from wandering.

Rating: * +