THE WILD EAST - PORTRAIT OF AN URBAN NOMAD is an ethnographic rendering of contemporary life in Ulan Bator, a city at the crossroads of tradition and modernity, communism and global capitalism.

The city is a kaleidoscopic snapshot of a society in the midst of a radical transformation. With huge sections of the rural population migrating, the population of the city has exploded, and urban planning is non-existent. The Russian built concrete housing blocks are surrounded by vast tent cities, and parking lots are jammed with everything from the hottest new Japanese cars to decrepit Russian jalopies operating as taxis.

Meanwhile, The icy Zud (extreme winter) has an iron grip on this coldest capital in the world, where temperatures have plummeted to minus 40 degrees Celsius, making it the worst winter since records have been kept. Mongolian men with scarves wound tightly around their heads and wearing huge mittens play billiards under the open skies, and at the market traders sell stiff, frozen animal skins and vegetables. Meanwhile the vast, pulsating power station pumps heat through the streets of the city where Jenya and Sasha are out hunting for income. During the summers they find work helping foreign development workers with the red tape of the impenetrable Mongolian bureaucracy, but in the winter jobs are few and far between.

They try anything, from reselling mobile phones with dubious origins, to selling intestines to sausage makers. Even the hopeful purchase of sutras for "luck in business" from the Gandan temple of the capital does not bring about the coveted rainmaking cash flow. As THE WILD EAST follows Jenya and Sasha through a series of hopeless financial ventures as middlemen, it becomes clear that their hopes and dreams not so different from young people everywhere.

A new father, Jenya thinks often about his responsibility to give his daughter security and a good education. Half-Russian and half-Mongolian, he has access to both cultures, both languages and a large network of contacts in both ethnic groups, but his consciousness of being neither Russian nor Mongolian also makes him feel rootless, especially since Mongolia became independent in 1990. As Jenya says, "We're not Mongolians and we're not Russians. Of course I can't blame all the Russians here or all the Mongolians here. It's a dilemma. All us half-Russians have this saying - that we're between two fires."

The older generation, such as Jenya's parents, long for the socialist past, and worry that their children will forget their families and tradition. Jenya's father held a lifetime position with the state run railroad. The security of a permanent job is unthinkable for his son.

Set at a contemporary junction at which many societies across the globe stand, THE WILD EAST is a narrative of the struggle to realize dreams in the face of cold reality, and reveals that despite different geographies and cultures, these hopes and dreams are something we all share.

"Visually stunning! An understated but powerful film that captures something of the tension between the vivid dreams and dreary realities of young people in so many parts of the 'non-industrial world.' By continuously juxtaposing what to a Western viewer is familiar and "exotic," the film comes as close as any to capturing the experience of an alternative modernity."—Visual Anthropology

"Excellent! Not only illustrates contemporary problems of economic and cultural change... a film that appeals to the senses, engaging the viewer from beginning to end."—Anthropology Review Database

"There are powerful, atmospheric pictures in this slice of cinema verité about harsh reality in a poverty-stricken, technologically backward nation. A spontaneously fascinating experience."—The Berlin Telegraph

"A beautifully told atmosphere-packed story. More contemplative than explanatory... the film invites us get close to ordinary people, people who are otherwise remote from our world and daily consciousness."—U.N. Magazine

"Conjures up a series of fascinating and highly expressive tableaux from distant Mongolia. It's an odyssey that leaves us with many promising and significant images. The film depicts the classical struggle between tradition and modernity, yet avoids moralising. this impressionistic documentary... manages to tell us a lot about life in the steppes of Mongolia at the start of a new millennium."—The Jutland Post