City of Wind

Lkhagvadulam
Purev-Ochir

Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir is a Mongolian scriptwriter and director, born in 1989.

Lkhagvadulam graduated from Dokuz Eylul University (Turkey) with a BA in film direction and interned at the Mongolian National Broadcaster. She also completed an academic certificate in screenwriting from FAMU (Czech Republic) in 2015. Alongside this, she also studied an MA in screenwriting at KinoEyes European Filmmaking Masters (Portugal). Furthermore, she taught History of Film and Film Direction classes at the Mongolian School of Film, Radio, and Television.

She has directed few short films including “Mountain Cat” (2020), selected among others at the Cannes Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Busan Film Festival and “Snow in September” (2022) which has won the Golden Lion for Best Short Film at the Venice Film Festival (Orizzonti) before winning the IMDB Short Cuts Award for Best Short Film at the Toronto Film Festival. “City of Wind” is her first feature film.

Seventeen-year-old Ze lives with his mother and sister in a small village near Ulaanbaatar. He's indispensable to his fellow villagers as he's a practicing shaman and is crucial for the local believers in resolving not only health but also psychological and family issues. Every day, he navigates between rigorous high school life and spiritual communication with deceased ancestors. His routine is disrupted by an encounter with a girl named Marala, who captivates him to the point where Ze gradually distances himself from his calling, immersing himself more in the materialistic world of the modern city. A completely new reality unfolds for him, speaking against old Mongolia and its traditional way of life. The film is full of contrasts, both visual and thematic, providing insight into the minds of contemporary Mongolian youth who stand on the border between the old and the new world, between order and freedom.