Youngster Amra (Bat-Ireedui Batmunkh) has a dream: to be crowned on Mongolia’s Got Talent and become a world-famous folk singer. His father Erdene (Yalalt Namsrai) is elected to lead the community’s claim against the semi-legal corporate mining operation that is pushing them off their ancestral lands. But when tragedy strikes, Amra’s dreams are shattered and he is drawn into working on an ‘artisanal’ mining operation by Mongolian locals to support his family. Can he live his own dream as well as his father’s?  

Moving beyond a simple binary of modernity versus tradition, Davaa nonetheless does not shy away from the deep scars left by capitalism on traditional ways of life. Stepping further from documentary into a drama using real people’s concerns, this is a beautiful story that is still deeply in tune with the lives of the Mongolian steppe.