Mongolian director Byambasuren Davaa has been making documentary and docufiction films since 2003, when her student project The Story of the Weeping Camel became an Oscar-nominated arthouse hit. Across her four features to date, she has kept up a remarkable standard, always maintaining a curious eye that radiates warmth, beauty and humour. From the lush plains of the Central Steppe to the harsh winds of the Gobi, Davaa is always thematically driven by the way modernity and tradition battle and co-exist; by the fragility of mankind’s balance with nature; by a delightfully honest view of the lives of children and with a picturesque but never prettified view of landscape. 

Accessible and utterly charming, Davaa’s films are nonetheless searching and thoughtful, always grounded by the pleasure of simply watching people be experts in their own lives. Given Mongolia’s vastness, Davaa is simultaneously an insider and outsider as an observer of lives in her home country. Complicating notions of authenticity while never leaving any doubt about her connection with her subjects, she is one of the great ethnographic filmmakers, whose work has been unjustly absent from cinemas in recent years. 

This season is curated by Duncan Carson, a film curator based in London. He has a long-term project to bring a new social enterprise independent cinema to Waltham Forest. He works at the Independent Cinema Office, the UK’s leading cinema organisation. The season will run concurrently with the Institute of Contemporary Arts.