‘KHADAK” is a charming – if a bit strange – eco- fable set in Mongolia. It opens in the snowcapped, isolated land where a young man, Bagi, his mother and his grandfather live in a yurt and enjoy life as sheepherders, just as their ancestors have for generations.
The family’s happiness is shattered the day a military convoy arrives, warning that a plague has struck animals in the region. The inhabitants are ordered to relocate to a drab mining town and their animals are slaughtered.
The relocated families are forced to live in ugly high-rises and work for an evil coal-mining company.
Bagi’s mother gets a job operating a large crane while his grandfather sits in his sparse apartment dreaming of his days on the steppes.
Bagi, meanwhile, rescues an exotic young woman who has been buried under a load of coal. She’s Zolzaya, a musical performer who supports herself by stealing coal.
At about this point, “Khadak” – which takes its name from a blue scarf that symbolizes an ancestral spirit – unexpectedly gives up any attempt at conventional narrative to become an avant-garde parable about humankind’s rape of the environment.
The first feature by Belgian-based documentarians Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth, “Khadak” is beautifully filmed and energetically acted, with standout performances by newcomer Tsetsegee Byamba as Zolzaya and Batzu Khayankhyarvaa as Bagi.
The film’s leisurely pace and abstract format isn’t meant for the multiplex crowd, but rather for adventurous moviegoers. It took guts to make “Khadak” and to give it a theatrical release. It might take even more guts to seek it out.
In Mongolian, with English subtitles. Running time: 104 minutes. Not rated (mature themes). At the Cinema Village, 12th Street, between Fifth Avenue and University Place.