Öndög
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Öndög |
| Country of production | Mongolia |
| original language | Mongolian |
| Publishing year | 2019 |
| length | 100 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Wang Quan'an |
| script | Wang Quan'an |
| production | Wang Quan'an |
| camera | Aymerick Pilarski |
| cut | Yang Wenjian |
| occupation | |
| |
Öndög ( Mongolian for " egg " ) is a Mongolian feature film by Wang Quan'an from the year 2019 .
The drama premiered on February 8, 2019 in the competition at the 69th Berlinale .
action
The naked body of a young woman is found in the Mongolian steppe. An 18-year-old inexperienced policeman is assigned to guard the possible crime scene overnight against a she-wolf who has already discovered the body. A 35-year-old shepherdess, known by the nickname "Dinosaur" and living self-sufficient, is instructed to help him with the task. For this purpose, she slaughters a sheep from her flock together with a shepherd friend and prepares a meal. When she brings it to the policeman in the night, she lights a fire against the cold, they both eat and drink together, get closer and sleep together. During the act, she unexpectedly jumps up and shoots several times in the dark at wolves that have already approached. The next morning, the forensics department arrives, the dead woman is transported away and the police officers leave the site. The shepherdess and the policeman go their own way and do not try to see each other again.
After a while the shepherdess goes to a clinic in town. A doctor there hands her a pregnancy test and instructs her in its use. When she returns home and does the test, she finds out that she is pregnant. The policeman is now flirting with a colleague, who soon leaves the office and goes to Ulan Bator . The shepherdess calls the shepherd friend to help her give birth to a calf. He drives to her and brings her a fossil dinosaur egg, a so-called "Öndög", which is common in Mongolia. After the calf is born, they spend some more time in the tent, he gives her apples and tries to convince her to try again with him to father a child and become a couple. At the end, the shepherdess tells the shepherd friend about her pregnancy and spends a passionate night of love with him.
background
For Wang Quan'an, Öndög is his seventh feature film and the first after a seven-year career break. In contrast to his previous works, this time the Chinese filmmaker decided not to write a script. According to Wang, the view of the Mongolian filming locations to which he and his film team traveled on January 8, 2018 was sufficient for Wang. He described the work on site as difficult. 90 days were spent on pre-production and 60 days were needed for the actual shooting. For the first time, Wang worked with the French cameraman Aymerick Pilarski after he had relied on the German Lutz Reitemeier for his previous films . Pilarski studied at the Beijing Film Academy , has lived in Beijing for about 10 years and is fluent in Mandarin .
The section of the film took place in Beijing. Wang describes Öndög as a “film about life, death and love”, but after watching the final version for the first time, he would have noticed differences to his previous experiences with it. He attributed this to getting to know the Mongolian understanding of time during the shooting. “Life, death and love were not what I had seen before; The meaning of everything was completely different. I've always believed that language's ability to finish a film falls short. And after graduation, the language feels superfluous, ”says Wang.
reception
The film received 2.8 out of four possible stars in the international reviews of the British specialist magazine Screen International and thus took 4th place among all 16 Berlinale competition films . Emin Alpers A Story of Three Sisters and Nadav Lapid's Synonymes (3.0 each) topped the ranking. In the critics' mirror of critic.de the film received mixed ratings and received ratings from "indisputable" to "strong".
Susanne Lenz writes impressedly in the Berliner Zeitung : “There is a sexual act twice and it is stunning. In one, the woman is already feeling for the rifle when her partner is still struggling to climax because the wolf is close. In the other, it's the dance of two headlamps that has never been seen before. "
Gunda Bartels treats the film in the Tagesspiegel rather cautiously and thinks that the film describes "pleasantly natural" . Fabian Tietke asks himself in the taz “why such an average successful film like 'Öndög' is running in the competition.” Anja Seeliger finds in Perlentaucher that the film has an effect: “You leave the cinema with a sigh - and one hour later you realize that you are still thinking about the film. "
Awards
Wang Quan'an competed with Öndög for the fourth time after 2007 , 2010 and 2012 at the Berlin International Film Festival for the Golden Bear , the main prize of the festival. He had already been able to win this at his first participation with Tuya's wedding . Öndög , however, did not receive an award .
Web links
- Profile at berlinale.de
- Öndög in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Aymerick Pilarsk . In: kotalentagency.com (accessed January 21, 2019).
- ↑ Competition and Berlinale Special: Agnès Varda, Agnieszka Holland, Hans Petter Moland, Isabel Coixet and Wang Quan'an in the competition program / directorial debut of Chiwetel Ejiofor in the Berlinale Special . In: berlinale.de, January 10, 2019 (accessed January 10, 2019).
- ↑ a b English language press release for the film, p. 9 (PDF file, 6.81 MB).
- ^ Dalton, Ben: Two films tie for top spot on Screen's final Berlin jury grid . In: screendaily.com, February 15, 2019 (accessed February 16, 2019).
- ↑ critic.de Kriikerspiegel Berlinale 2019 , last accessed on February 17, 2019.
- ↑ Susanne Lenz: Stunning sex scenes and an extraordinary woman - "Öndög" . In: Berliner Zeitung . February 8, 2019, ISSN 0947-174X ( online ).
- ↑ Gunda Bartels: Silence of the Steppe, Tagesspiegel February 9, 2019 , last accessed on February 17, 2019.
- ↑ Fabian Tietke: Landscape painting with steppe rocker, taz, February 9, 2019 , last accessed on February 17, 2019.
- ↑ Anja Seeliger: Absolutely modern: The cattle herders in "Öndög" by Wang Quan'an (competition), Perlentaucher, February 9, 2019 , last accessed on February 17, 2019.