The early life of Genghis Khan is explored in Mongol, a sprawling, old-fashioned epic that was 2007's Best Foreign Film Oscar-nominated epic from Kazakhstan and made by Russian filmmaker Sergei Bodrov as the first in a trilogy. "Mr. Bodrov follows his hero, a young warrior named Temudgin, from boyhood to the eve of world conquest in 1206, when he would become the Genghis Khan known and feared by millions. There are some gaps in the narrative, but the portrait that emerges is of a reformer and a unifier, a leader who consolidated rival tribes and factions and who modernizes some of the traditional Mongol ways....Mongol moves solemnly across the decades, accumulating rich ethnographic detail and enough dramatic intrigue to sustain a viewer's interest through the slower stretches. While it takes a sympathetic view of young Genghis Khan—whose name, in the West, is a synonym for rapacity—it does not force him into conformity with modern sensibilities. His world feels authentically raw and refreshingly archaic, and also strangely beautiful." (NY Times) more at mongolmovie.com. 35mm Cinemascope.
2007, color, 2 hours 1 minute, Kazakhstan