"Harvest Moon" is adapted from the short novel "Tuntuulei" by T. Bum-Erdene.  Why did you select this novel?

The author, Mr. Bum-Erdene, and I worked together on two of the films I produced. Almost 10 years ago, I shared my idea about making a film about a father and son.

He suggested that I read his novel "Tuntuulei". This is how I first fell in love with the story. Tuntuulei's story has been stuck in my heart for a long time. It explores the private world of a child and a man and their relationships with their fathers. When his father gets seriously ill, Tulgaa, who works as a chef in the city, returns to his village. Soon after, the father dies, and he decides to stay to complete the harvesting his father promised to finish. While working in a field, he meets a ten-year-old boy, Tuntuulei, who lives with his grandparents while his single mother works in the city. The relationship between Tulgaa and Tuntuulei makes them challenge themselves.

Let me first congratulate you on this beautiful and unique film. I had the chance to watch it and was deeply touched by the story and the outstanding depiction of the Mongolian landscape. "Harvest Moon" is your director’s debut film. Every first film is somehow special in so many different ways. What makes "Harvest Moon" special for you? Why did you choose “Harvest Moon” as your director's debut film?

Born and raised in Mongolia, I truly admire our country's rich history, culture, and unique nomadic lifestyle, which has become rarer in the world. As an artist, I have observed the influence and impact of this lifestyle on people's emotional stages at different ages, how we think, and how we react or interact. “Harvest Moon” is the perfect material for expressing our people's hearts and mindset through the pressing common challenges of modern Mongolian society zooming by the emotional trauma of the film’s main characters. In fact, I want this debut film to authentically introduce my people to the world – as individuals or as a nation – emotionally and culturally, using Mongolia's truly exotic landscape as a background for the world to have a real cinematic experience.

You were selected to participate in "Open-Door" sessions at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland. Could you tell us about your experience and the producers’ training in Rotterdam? Was this training useful for you?

During the 2018 Ulaanbaatar International Film Festival, I met Mrs. Sophie Bourdon, director of the Open Doors Programme of the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland, who told us Mongolia would be one of the focus countries for Open Doors in three years. In 2019, I applied for Producers’ Lab training, but unfortunately, I wasn’t admitted. In 2020, I applied again, and this time, I received a positive response. My admission for the training offered by the Open Doors Programme of the Locarno Film Festival coincided with wrapping up shooting and the initial cut of "Harvest Moon" by the film’s director. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the 14-day training took place online, during which a screening of the un-cut version of "Harvest Moon" got positive feedback from European producers, programmers of popular film festivals, and festival organizers who said the film had a good chance of attracting an international audience. 

Naturally, I also received various suggestions on how to enhance the film’s emotional effect for a worldwide audience. When we set out to work on the project, our team didn’t have the goal of creating a film for an international audience. The film’s director read "Tuntuulei" by author T. Bum-Erdene some seven years before and wanted to make it into a film to show how innocent and pure a child’s world is. When developing the story into a movie, the director wanted to tell a tale of separation, being orphaned, but also of healing, all while showing the private worlds of three different generations of men who find themselves in their childhood, adulthood, and old age. The story is set against the backdrop of Mongolian culture and brings forth the issue of divorce, one of the main social issues of modern times. I really liked these ideas and decided to work as a producer for this film.

Mrs. Inca, the Rotterdam Lab training director of the International Film Festival of Rotterdam, which is a partner of the Locarno Film Festival, had individual interviews with all training participants, asking us about our reasons for becoming producers, our training needs, and plans for how we would reflect what we learned in our future productions. Based on these interviews and our film projects, she selected me to participate in the Rotterdam Lab. I was very glad to be admitted to the programme as we don’t have training tailored for producers in Mongolia, including creative film producers and those that share experience in the international film industry.

It’s amazing what you have achieved so far. Of course, SDC is very happy that we could be part of your amazing project. What are your future goals?

Combining the knowledge acquired from the Locarno and Rotterdam labs with my experience as a creative producer at home and abroad, we successfully organized training for 13 creative producers in Mongolia. This training was the first of its kind in Mongolia, organized with support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and in cooperation with the Mongolian Film Institute. It was conducted by a guest trainer, Isabelle Glachant, and experienced Mongolian producers. Mrs. Glachant is a French producer and trainer at the Open Doors Programme of the Locarno Film Festival who resides and works between France, China, and Hong Kong. The participants were very happy with the training, as it was based on practical experience. Our goal is to make it an annual training course and continuously improve its content. Apart from that, as part of my main work as a producer, in 2022, we produced a miniseries called "Victim" With the VOO platform. In April, we plan to premiere the feature film "Mongol" domestically. With the VOO platform, we created the miniseries as 16 episodes.

What message would you like to share with our readers? 

In the society we’ve created, our modern lives have become so busy with so many things demanding our attention every day that we don’t always have time to look into our inner selves to ask questions about the meaning of life. I invite you to watch "Harvest Moon" to give yourself a short break from noisy city life and spend some time in the serenity of the Mongolian countryside with the main characters, Tuntuulei and Tulgaa. I believe our film will give your heart and soul something valuable and important. The movie can be found in the video sections of Univision and DDish. I wish all the best to the readers of this interview. Please watch the trailer for "Harvest Moon" Film. 

Thank you for your time and the insight you’ve shared with us.