"Back to selectionGabrielle Brady's The Wolves Always Come at Night follows Davaa and Zaya, a rural Mongolian couple with four young daughters whose dream to continue the traditional herding way of life they'd always known is upended by a cataclysmic storm; which forces them, like so many of their friends and neighbors before, to finally relocate to the outskirts of the urban capital Ulaanbaatar in search of work."
"It's a deceptively simple tale of loss - of both livelihood and identity - poignantly and cinematically captured by the talented Australian filmmaker's lens. Yet what makes the docufiction drama, crafted with a primarily Mongolian team, so remarkable and powerful is that it's actually co-scripted with its dedicated stars, who bravely recreate their real-life journey of displacement down to the emotional toll it takes on all."
"Davaa and Zaya had been searching for a way to tell their story and the forced migration of nomadic herders in Mongolia. In that first meeting Davaa shared that every night, before he fell asleep in the city, he could hear the sound of his horse from the countryside. He knew it couldn't be real - and yet it felt impossibly vivid. It struck me in that moment: his loss of homeland and animals had become a kind of physical presence"
The film follows Davaa and Zaya, a rural Mongolian couple with four young daughters, whose traditional herding life is upended by a cataclysmic storm. The family is forced to relocate to the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar in search of work, joining many others displaced from the countryside. The production is a docufiction crafted with a primarily Mongolian team and co-scripted with the film's real-life stars, who recreate their journey and its emotional toll. The film captures loss of homeland and animals as a palpable presence. The film premiered at TIFF 2024 and was selected as Australia’s entry for the 2026 Oscars.
Read at Filmmaker Magazine
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]