In the high Altai Mountains of northern Mongolia, a young shepherd boy comes of age, tending his family’s flocks on the mountain steppes. Knowing little of the world beyond the surrounding peaks, his nomadic way of life is disrupted by modernity.

This confrontation comes in stages. First, his older siblings leave the family yurt to attend a distant boarding school. Then the boy’s grandmother dies, and with her his connection to the old ways. But perhaps the greatest tragedy strikes when his dog, Arsylang—“all that was left to me”—ingests poison set out by the boy’s father to protect his herd from wolves. “Why is it so?” Dshurukawaa cries out in despair to the Heavenly Blue Sky, to be answered only by the wind.

Rooted in the oral traditions of the Tuvan people, The Blue Sky weaves the timeless story of a boy poised on the cusp of manhood with the story of a people on the threshold.

Galsan Tschinag

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