In the Dusk

Language: Mongolian, with English subtitles

长河落日/長河落日

UK Premiere

Synopsis Deep in the grassland of Inner Mongolia, a white-haired granny is looking for a pony. Her name is Saren. She is a “Shaman” in people’s mouths. She practices medicine for local people. She firmly believed that the soul of her dead grandson was transformed into a pony and got lost on the grassland. However, the relatives around her don’t believe this “superstition”, and her son is immersed in the pain of losing his son. He just wants to let things pass as soon as possible and doesn’t want his mother to toss about like this.

In order to ensure that his grandson’s soul won’t be alone, Saren came to the city and traveled all over the grassland by herself, searching for the pony transformed by the reincarnation of his grandson’s soul.

Director’s Statement The short film “sunset on the river” contains several themes that I have been thinking about for a long time in the first 25 years of my life: the elderly and children, nature and gods, animals and human nature, women and inheritance, fiction and reality, and the cycle of life. In high school, I read Zijian Chi’s right bank of Erguna River, in which the female shaman lost her son to save others. It made me think about life at that time. The sadness brought by this replacement lingers in my mind and continues to this day. Shaman, an identity full of northern images and full of feminine characteristics, can connect heaven and earth with God. But as a person, her sacrifice and emotional loss run through her daily life so truly. Her God, like human life emotion, originates from and belongs to nature. I think that in this mechanical generation dominated by reason, perhaps some stories about the most primitive sensory emotions of nature and mankind are the comfort we need at present.

Festivals & Awards

2020 Golden Coconut Hainan Island International Film Festival

2021 Atlanta Film Festival

2021 Mongolia JingEr International Film Festival