Khadak
Belgium/Germany/The Netherlands, 105’ , 2006

Directed by: Peter Brosens, Jessica Hope Woodworth
Script: Peter Brosens, Jessica Hope Woodworth
Producer: Heino Deckert
Production company: Telepool GmbH, Ma.Ja.De.
Cinematography: Rimvydas Leipus
Editing: Nico Leunen
Music: Altan Urag
Cast: Tsetsegee Byamba, Dugarsuren Dagvadorj, Banzar Damchaa, Tserendarizav Dashnyam, Batzul Khayankhyarvaa

Format: 35 mm, color
Running time: 105'

Synopsis
Bagi and his grandparents live a nomadic life herding sheep in the frozen hills of Mongolia. Their pristine world is disrupted when a military convoy arrives, letting Bagi's family and others know that a plague has struck the animals in their region and they must relocate to a mining town, complete with high-rise apartments. In their first fiction film, documentary filmmakers Jessica Woodworth and Peter Brosens apply a distinctly impressionistic style to an original story with haunting themes. Capitalism is expanding into the most remote of regions and creates ongoing tensions between the past and the future, creation and destruction, and accepting or denying one's fate.

Awards
Venice Film Festival 2006
Luigi De Laurentiis Award

Bratislava International Film Festival 2006
Special Mention
Prize of the Ecumenical Jury - Special Mention

Directors Biography
Peter Brosens started making films in Ecuador with the award-winning documentary ‘The Path of Time’. Between 1993 and 1999 he directed and produced his internationally acclaimed ‘Mongolia Trilogy’ which were awarded many times, screened at over 100 festivals and distributed around the globe. Peter currently runs Bo Films, a Belgian independent production company.

Jessica Woodworth began working in television in Paris in 1994. She then became a stringer/producer in Hong Kong and Beijing for news, documentaries and magazines. She shot her first film Urga Song in Mongolia in 1999. and directed The Virgin Diaries, a documentary shot in Morocco in 2001. Jessica is currently a writer and director for Bo Films in Belgium.

Web pages
Official website
Official trailer

Reviews
It is the mysterious script, however, which really had a transcendental effect on us. The storylines are so powerfully woven together that Khadak results in a majestic meditation about past and present, tradition and modernity, myth and reality / Zone 03
A breathtaking vision about Mongolia in transition. With painfully beautiful image compositions and ravishing musical phrases, Brosens and Woodworth lead the viewer into a trance where the pure aesthetics will bring him to tears. This masterful film poem is probably the most stunning film-diamond ever cut by a Flemish filmmaker / De Standaard

Location and screening schedule:
matinee: SC Cinema, Friday, October 26th at 9.00
premiere: SC Cinema, Friday, October 26th at 20.00
reprisal: Cinema Europe, Saturday, October 27th at 16.00