Sometimes you have to go far away to appreciate all the good things that are back home. For Mongolian filmmaker Byambasuren Davaa, it was a move to Germany that made her appreciate the uniqueness of her country's centuries-old nomadic tradition.
'My family often went off around the countryside during summer holidays when I was a kid,' says Davaa, who is finishing her studies at the Television and Film Academy in Munich. 'I always looked forward to these holidays. But after being in Munich, the nomadic life suddenly looked peculiar.'
After the unexpected success of The Story of the Weeping Camel, a docu-feature Davaa co-directed with fellow student Luigi Falorni, it's no surprise she's returned to the land of nomads for her next project.
The Cave of the Yellow Dog, screening at the Pusan International Film Festival, which started this week, tells the story of a nomad girl, Nansal, who finds a puppy in the wild and hides it when her father won't let her keep it. The film may have a simple story line, but it's irresistibly sweet and likely to delight both adults and children.
The movie title is a homage to an old Mongolian folk story. 'My grandmother told me the story of the yellow dog when I was a little girl,' says the 34-year-old director. 'I wanted to make a simple story, and I found my story and the folk tale interacted well, so I decided to merge them.'
Like her previous film, The Cave of the Yellow Dog features a real nomad family: a young couple and their three children. But whereas the camel film was shot in the barren Gobi Desert, Davaa chose to set her latest film amid the luscious green pastures of Mongolia.
Australian, New Zealand, Mexican, European and Asian distributors have snapped up the film, which is due to be released in Japan in December and in Taiwan next spring - 'to coincide with the year of the dog', as the local distributor puts it.