email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

PRODUCTION / FUNDING France / Mongolia / Portugal / Netherlands / Germany

EXCLUSIVE: Filming begins on City of Wind by Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir

by 

- The Mongolian director, winner this year in the short film competitions of Venice and Toronto, moves to feature filmmaking with a production headed by France’s Aurora Films

EXCLUSIVE: Filming begins on City of Wind by Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir
Director Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir

Winner of the awards for Best Short Film this year in Venice, Toronto and, more recently, in the Hamptons with Snow in September, after participating in Cannes’ Competition in 2020 with Mountain Cat, Mongolian filmmaker Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir began filming yesterday on her feature debut, titled City of Wind [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
. Standing out in the cast are Tergel Bold-Erdene and Nomin-Erdene Ariunbyamba.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Written by the director, the script centres on Ze who’s in his last year of high school; he is 17 years old and a shaman. One day he meets Marla, a delicate but distrustful young woman, who has come to visit Ze’s spirit because of her illness. For Ze, it is love at first sight. When Marla rejects his affection, Ze confronts for the first time the limits of spirituality, love and his own evolution…  City of Wind is a sober portrait of teenage life in today's Ulaanbaatar.

Produced by Katia Khazak and Charlotte Vincent for Aurora Films, Ze is co-produced by Guru Media (Mongolia), Uma Pedra no Sapato (Portugal), Volya Films (The Netherlands) and in association with 27 Films Production (Germany). It is supported by the Aide aux Cinémas du Monde fund of the CNC, the fund for French-Portuguese cinema co-productions, the NFF+HBF Co-production scheme (which brings together the Netherlands Film Fund and the Hubert Bals Fund), the HBF+Europe: Minority Co-production support (another programme initiated by the Hubert Bals Fund), the World Cinema Fund of the Berlinale, and Cofinova. The feature film has also benefited from the support of the ARRI, the MEDIA programme, the screenwriting assistance programme of CICLIC ( Centre-Val de Loire region), and the Hubert Bals Fund. Winner of the Open Doors Hub Production Grant in Locarno in 2020, the project has also won two prizes at the Torino Film Lab: a CNC special mention in 2019, and a Post-production Award in 2021. Filming will take place from 24 October to 2 December with Portugal’s Vasco Viana (Tommy Guns [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Carlos Conceição
film profile
]
, Montanha [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: João Salaviza
film profile
]
) as director of photography. French distribution and international sales are currently being negotiated.

For the record, Aurora Films unveiled Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Davy Chou
film profile
]
in Cannes last May (a stand-out in Un Certain Regard, acquired for many territories by Sony Pictures Classics and MUBI, selected as the Cambodian candidate for the upcoming Best International Film Oscar, and released in French cinemas on 25 January 2023), Blandine Lenoir’s Angry Annie [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
in Locarno’s Piazza Grande (released in French cinemas on 30 November) and Wissam Charaf’s Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Wissam Charaf
film profile
]
in Venice’s Giornate degli Autori, where it won the Europa Cinemas label (in French cinemas on 26 April 2023). The company is also behind The Beast in the Jungle [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Patric Chiha
film profile
]
by Patric Chiha, currently in post-production.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

(Translated from French)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

Privacy Policy