This moving portrait of youth, awarded at the Venice Film Festival, will captivate you

Multifaceted youth

17-year-old Ze (Tergel Bold-Erdene) is a brilliant student with a bright future. A model child, as mature and mature as he is, he also plays an important role outside of school for the shaman community. At the end of the invocation ritual, Ze can communicate with the spirit of the deceased to guide members of his community in the most important decisions of their lives.

But his encounter with Maralaa (Nomin-Erden Ariyunbiamba), a young girl his own age, will question his structured everyday life and shake the power he took for granted. Will he manage to find a balance between his two lives?

“We carry many identities within us, with the responsibilities that entail”

For his first feature film, Mongolian director Lkhagvadula Purev-Ochir was inspired by an encounter that had a profound effect on him in his youth with a character who was atypical to say the least, at least as unique as the young Ze.

“My mother took me to see a shaman for a family matter– says the film director. While I was waiting for my mother, a young man came and sat next to me. He looked very beautiful, both his hands were covered in tattoos and he was wearing earrings. The game started playing on the phone. As soon as we left the house, my mother told me that it was the shaman we had just consulted. I have already gone to see shamans and psychics, but never a shaman younger than me! This moment had a great impact on me We often carry many identities within us, with the responsibilities that come with them.“

It is this constant conflict between the different aspects of Ze’s personality that makes her character so fascinating. A brilliant student and conciliatory son, a teenager discovering his body and his sexuality, a shaman with an ancestral practice that the entire community of Ulaanbaatar can rely on…

It is not far from the banal, stereotypical and binary opposition of tradition and modernity that inspired the Mongolian setting of Ulaanbaatar. Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir He prefers to capture the questions of Mongolian youth, who are torn between their inevitable curiosity and the strong spirituality with which their culture is imbued. Impressive shamanism sessions alternate with passionate dance scenes in a nightclub, where Zee, initiated by the mischievous Marala, forgets himself in a different way and seems to leave reality, as during his earthly rituals.

Impressive in just this first role, young Tergel thick-erden Seduced by his deep and powerful search for identity. A very refined performance that predicts a great career and did not lack attention, as the young actor was awarded at the last Venice Film Festival for the quality of his interpretation.

However, this is not the only achievement of “The Young Shaman”, who was also chosen to represent Mongolia at the last Oscar ceremony in the “Best Foreign Film” category.

Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochiri’s first film “Young Shaman”, awarded at the Venice Film Festival, can be seen in theaters today.