Kuma, a young Kazak man, retraces the steps of his grandfather who was formerly an eagle master back to the remote mountainous region of his family's origin. There, in nomadic Mongolia, he fulfills his dream of trapping and training his own eagle. Under the tutelage of a local eagle master named Khairatkhan, Kuma learns not only the ways of hunting with eagles, but also the ways of his own people. Set against the staggering and exotic beauty of Mongolia, KIRAN immerses the viewer in a world forgotten by time.—Joseph Spaid
Kiran Over Mongolia is a visually stunning documentary that tells an almost mythic tale. Kuma, a young Kazakh from Ulaaanbaatar travels hundreds of miles to Mongolias wild western mountains. There, he seeks a master who will help him pursue his unlikely dream: to catch and train a hunting eagle, the way his people have done for millennia.
The Kazakhs, an ancient Turkic speaking people who live in Mongolia may preserve the purest Kazakh culture. More eagle hunters live in this small area than in all the expanse of Kazakhstan.
Kuma, inspired by his octogenarian grandfathers tales of being a former eagler, invites his father for a drive west through the daunting spaces of central Mongolia. They grind endlessly over stony plains and through bare hills, raising plumes of dust from the rutted dirt roads, staying at crude rest stops and hospitable yurts.
The travelers arrive in Bayaan Olgii just in time for the Eagle Hunters Festival. Hundreds of eaglers display their birds and compete in games of skill and craft. The sudden sight of a horde of horsemen trotting straight at you, heads topped with caps of fox fur and lynx fur, red silk and owl plumes, hooded eagles on their heavy gloves, transports you instantly to the time of Kubilai or Jenghiz.
After making inquiries of several eaglers, Kuma is accepted by Khairatkhan, an amiable middle-aged Kazakh with a stern, fiercely weathered face that is as likely to crack into a sudden grin as an eagle- like frown. Kuma learns to feed eagles without giving them too much, despite their rapacious tendency to gobble and grab. In a memorable sequence, he calls the eagle to him from a distance, and stands without ducking when the flying dragon hits his arm and nearly knocks him down. Their training culminates in the birds killing a fox, a scene done skillfully and cleanly, with neither flinching nor horror.
The film's visuals are unique. The vivid black- and- golden eagles and their capped and booted handlers glow in the brilliant light against a lunar background of bare mountains shaped like frozen waves, plains like a sea of rippling stone. To most urban humans, they inhabit a world as far from any modern time and space as another planet.
