Family life hangs in a delicate balance in 2002’s The Cave of the Yellow Dog, Byambasuren Davaa’s second feature, a box office hit in Mongolia as well as around the world. The arrival of a puppy amongst a nomad’s family spreads ripples. Is it one of the wolves who threaten them from the margins, or is it one of the many animals that sustain them? The intimate life of this family is shown with cinematic breadth, beguiling humour and enquiring detail. At its core is the pleasure of watching people live their lives with a curious eye: curing cheese, making clothes, playing with their children and herding cattle.

Davaa’s first solo directed film – startlingly, her graduation project from film school – travels to a radically different territory to Weeping Camel: the Mongolian Central Steppes. Davaa’s ancestral home proved fertile territory to grasp a way of life that she felt was permanently slipping away. Folkloric without romanticising, it is a beautiful document, lightly nudging at fiction to express deeper truths.