To a nomad in the sparse Mongolian dessert, Milk is a coveted source of nourishment contained
in all traditional food. It is also a symbol of the virtuous nature of women, their rite of passage
into motherhood and destined place in the world as a giver.
Directrice and actress Uisenma Borchu boldly portrays an unsettled Mongolian woman living in Germany, tired and unfulfilled, who embarks on a philosophical quest in the Gobi desert to confront the fundamentality of her existentialism and feminine nature. Her arrival at her sister’s tent begins as a culture clash between two women who lived under different circumstances for many years – modernity versus tradition, displacement versus abandonment – that transforms into an ideological struggle for emancipation and embrace of their sisterhood.
But can they break from the patriarchal complex and expect to remain virtuous? Borchu reframes femininity with the subtle awakening that a woman can only love, once she learns to be. Employing jump cuts between the physical and psychological dimensions of two sisters in a lyrical tug-of-war, it is an intimately primal look at the counter politics of the ownership of a woman’s body and psyche in a masculine world, one that exudes raw sensuality and power amidst a majestic landscape of endless hinterland. That a woman can give; and a woman can claim.