Plot

Gaala is only twelve, but he must look after his mother and younger brother. His farther died 2 years ago. To make ends meet, he is a vendor in the market in Ulaanbaatar and brings money to his mother who waits for him in the ger, the traditional Mongolian yurt, in the poor and dirty periphery of the city. The boy misses many days of school and has little time for play. His mother dreams of a different future for her son; to lift him from poverty, she attempts to have him accepted into a Buddhist monastery in order to become a monk. With his mother the boy visits the monastery in Pethub, one of the most famous in Mongolia. But for him, the road to the monastic life seems full of obstacles and ill-suited to his restless, rebellious nature. In order to achieve his goal, Galaa must study hard and advance through a complicated bureaucracy at the monastery. With Gaalas story, we are brought closer to the reality of life in the capital of Mongolia, where families live in dire conditions in the characteristic yurt, in a society that day by day abandons tradition in favor of modernity and its contradictions. Modernity is a condition of choicesor at least what seem like choices. There are certainly many cultural pressures and many social niches, although our decisions may be more overdetermined than we think. In present-day Mongolia, especially for a poor fatherless boy who is much influenced by popular media like hip-hop music, the choices may be more constrictedand the ultimate selections more overdeterminedthan we care to admit.

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