Our dreams can only be as great as our circumstances. Having ambitions requires the ability to imagine a way out of your present. This can be a difficult task if you spend a large portion of your existence just trying to get through the day. So, as happens with Olzi (Batsug Ortseikh), the young man at the heart of Zoljargal Porvdash’s brilliant novel If I Could Hibernate, you have to worry about taking care of your siblings and being able to buy coal to heat your yurt. He lives in. While the film traces it beautifully (and heartbreakingly), just daring to dream big — let alone achieve an even bigger dream — can sometimes feel like a burden.
Like many older brothers before him, Olzi became the de facto man in charge of his household. With his father long gone and his mother still suffering from a drinking problem, it’s up to him to keep the house – well, the yurt – afloat. This means that even when he studies dutifully in school (he easily makes it through physics class), he is tasked with making sure his siblings are fed, clothed, and taken care of (he often sells his own possessions to make up for the money his mother wastes). .
This was becoming more difficult to achieve, as he and his family became accustomed to city life and it began to feel more expensive and difficult with each passing day. When his mother decides to return to a job in the countryside and his teacher advises him to participate in a physics competition with a chance for a scholarship, Ulzii is pushed to the limits.
On paper, If I Could Hibernate sounds like a story seen many times before: a coming-of-age story in which an overachieving but poverty-stricken teenager must figure out what kind of life he can make for himself while trying to do good for his family and himself. However, Olzi’s tale leaps off the screen in surprising and welcome ways, enhanced by how Borvdash establishes an unmistakable sense of place.
Set on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, this film is about the margins, about those neighborhoods and people who feel forever on the margins. It’s also a movie about the extreme cold that can make anyone cruel. As the English title suggests (similar to a line from the movie about how easy it is to be a bear and completely skip winter), this is a drama about the harsh forces of winter. Watching it, you can sometimes feel the freezing wind hitting your face.
But this is not a dour and depressing drama. There is a childish sense of humor that runs throughout. Purevdash finds joy in the small moments, like when we watch the siblings play a game to decide who will ask the store owner if they have extra cardboard boxes. Indeed, even when things seem particularly dire for Olzee and his brothers, If I Could Hibernate doesn’t allow itself to wallow in isolation. There’s a joy to the film thanks to Purevdash’s dialogue and, in particular, Johanni Curtet’s ever-elastic score, which swells and deflates with startling beauty.
The film also benefits from Uurtsaikh’s controlled central performance. Considering how often we see Olzi dressed in winter clothes and with completely cold facial expressions, it is surprising that Ortsikhe is able to capture so many of the fears that dictate a young man’s life. There is an ambiguity in his outlook—one that often leads his teacher, his mother, and even his neighbors—to question what is really going on with him at any given moment and to question why he does not openly seek help.
However, Uurtsaikh also imbues this very proud, tightly wound teenager with a kind of intense warmth that radiates whenever he’s allowed to slow down and take in his surroundings. The scene where he and his friends break out singing a song with unbridled joy is a standout. Ulzii would be a happy, happy-go-lucky child if he weren’t burdened by adult concerns that force him to accept jobs like delivering goat carcasses across town or illegally logging trees in the forest for little pay.
If I Could Hibernate made history last year as the first Mongolian film to participate in the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival, competing in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2023 edition. Now, Purevdash marks Mongolia’s directorial debut at the Academy Awards, What speaks about the power and magic of this intimate drama that finds grains of hope even within the bleak picture it paints. Offering neither a comforting vision of defiant resilience nor a steely portrait of stalled (if not entirely abandoned) ambitions, Olzey’s tale rings true precisely because it refuses to collapse into a happy ending.