If you have not yet seen The Story of the Weeping Camel, please do. You will not regret it.

Set in Mongolia it is the tale of a family (two sets of grandparents–or at least that’s what I thought they were–a young mother and father and their three children) who herd goats, sheep and camels. When a beautiful white colt is born and his mother refuses to suckle him, the family fears he will die and tries everthing (including hand feeding) to get him and his mother together, but she is unmoved. They bring him to her colt and she kicks him away. Then she leaves him so that she can wander off alone. I will leave it there and not tell you where it ends but it is a story of past, present and future colliding, of mother love gone wrong, of motherhood in general, of family. AND it is heartbreaking and joyous.

I’m making it sound all very Walt-Disney, but it’s not. It’s stark and beautiful and horrifying and wondrous. The sound the baby camel makes when he is trying to get to his mother haunts me. The sound of the violin in the desert moves me. The stark beauty of the lives of this family is astonishing. The scenery, harsh and yet breathtaking.

I don’t know what else to say but watch it. And you can watch it with your kids, too (unless they’re freaked out about seeing an animal being born, because there is that.)

signed,
the weeping Myfanwy
(you should have seen me when this movie ended! wah wah wah!)

p.s. After you watch it you can emulate the herder’s camel noise with one of your pets like we did. Hanh, hanh–something like that. We did it to Darby until he got freaked out and left the room.