Ub Lama
Regno Unito, Lithuania / 2011 / 52 min / Colour
Italian premiere
Gaala is only twelve, but must look after his mother and younger brother. To make ends meet, he is a vendor in the market in Ulaanbaatar and brings money to his mother who waits for him in the ger, the traditional Mongolian yurt, in the poor and dirty periphery of the city. The boy misses many days of school and has little time for play. His mother dreams of a different future for her son; to lift him from poverty, she attempts to have him accepted into a Buddhist monastery in order to become a monk. With his mother the boy visits the monastery in Pethub, one of the most famous in Mongolia. But for him, the road to the monastic life seems full of obstacles and ill-suited to his restless, rebellious nature. With Gaala’s story, we are brought closer to the reality of life in the capital of Mongolia, where families live in dire conditions in the characteristic yurt, in a society that day by day abandons tradition in favour of modernity and its contradictions.
Credits
Language Mongolian, Tibetan Subject Egle Vertelyte Screenplay Egle Vertelyte Cinematography Gerelsukh Otgon Sound Vytis Puronas Editing Francesca Scalisi Music Titas Petrikis Producer Lukas Trimonis, Arunas Matelis Production company Wostok, Studio Nominum