Sunday, March 24 / 1:00 pm / Ottawa Art Gallery

Program: A Passage Beyond Fortune, If Only I Could Hibernate

Feature presentation \

education \ dreams \ coming-of-age

Having its world premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, writer-director Zoljargal Purevdash’s engaging first feature, If Only I Could Hibernate, is the first film ever from Mongolia to be in the Official Selection at Cannes. The film tells the story of a teenage boy, Ulzii, who lives in a poor neighbourhood in Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar. Despite the challenges of poverty, Ulzii excels in school. With the help of his teachers, his aptitude for physics has secured him a spot to compete for a university scholarship. But after his troubled, alcoholic mother decides she must return to her village in the countryside, Ulzii and his younger siblings will have to survive the winter in the city without her. As he prepares for the competition, Ulzii will face some daunting circumstances if he hopes to prevail. A story of courage and determination, I Wish I Could Hibernate combines a gritty Italian neo-realist style with a reverence for the transformative powers of education seen in films like Good Will Hunting. With this very promising debut feature, Zoljargal Purevdash’s arrival suggests the world will see more fine films from Mongolia in the near future.

- Tom McSorley

Short film \

A Passage Beyond Fortune

2022 / 16 minutes / Saskatchewan
Director: Weiye Su
Language: English

The Chow family confronts a popular (and untrue) myth about Moose Jaw’s Chinese community and the town’s infamous Tunnels and reflects on how it compares to their own lived experience.

Through the lens of an intimate family story, A Passage Beyond Fortune examines the ways in which history is not only constructed, but also disseminated, and the implications this has on our understanding of our nation’s past and the communities built within it.