
The Heirs of Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan's descendants still live across the Siberian steppe, where winter holds for ten months and three distinct peoples keep old survival skills alive. The guide Tansendaryá leads the way through an itinerant camp of gers, the traditional Mongolian felt tents, where herders train horses and manage goats and camels through a punishing calendar. Deeper in the boreal forest, the film settles with the Tsaatan, a community built around reindeer husbandry whose small, closed population faces the genetic toll of generations of inbreeding. The camera then follows a Kazakh village of falconers who hunt with golden eagles nearly two meters across the wings and weighing up to seven kilos, watching the birds work in real time rather than describing the hunt secondhand. No narrator imposes a single argument; the film moves camp to camp, letting gers, reindeer pens, and falconry perches carry the story of how Mongol-descended peoples have adapted, and in the Tsaatan's case struggled, to hold onto a way of life the modern world has mostly passed by.