Egg

A woman's body is found naked on the Mongolian steppe. A young and inexperienced policeman is left to guard the scene until morning. Because he knows nothing about the country, a local herder is sent to watch over him and the body: a woman in her thirties who can handle a rifle and keep wolves at a distance. They light a fire, they drink, and the night goes on. Wang Quan'an's film is not interested in the murder but in what happens during that night. The steppe here is not scenery but the force that decides everything: distance, cold, animals. Öndög is the Mongolian word for egg. The camera mostly stays a long way off and shows the people as small marks inside all that emptiness.