“Daughter of Genghis” has been announced as a portrait of a nationalist gang leader at this year’s Hot Docs Film Festival. And while it follows Gerel Byamba, the leader of an all-female, ultra-nationalist Mongolian group called Gerel Khas, it’s also a surprisingly poignant documentary portrait of a widow and her orphaned son trying to connect amid grief. Directors Kristoffer Juel Poulsen and Christian Als (who also shot the film) follow Byamba and her son Temeulen for seven years, capturing how grief can drive someone to extreme emotional states that manifest as both violence against the community and neglect toward the community. those closest to you.
The document begins with an aggressive, chaotic sequence. The first few minutes of “Daughter of Genghis” throw the audience into the grip of Gerel Khas’ “activist” work. Byamba and her comrades are shown storming into a sauna and harassing the sex workers who make their living there. They can be heard via a voice-over in which they say that the Chinese are “disgusting” while they call all kinds of insults at the young, vulnerable women. Their mission, as Bymaba tells it, is to shame these sex workers so that they stop selling their bodies to Chinese men, because the Mongolian bloodline must remain ‘pure’. It’s an angry justification for agitated intimidation that Gerel Khas finds not only patriotic but essential.
That dark dichotomy, that one man’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist, is at the heart of the first part of ‘Daughter of Genghis’. After all, Gerel Khas’ invasive tactics are not that different from what various police forces do in many places around the world. In this particular case, however, they carry with them the history of conflict and neighbor-to-neighbor annexation between Mongolia and China.
Poulsen and Als turn their cameras on Byamba and her compatriots as they talk about this history while absolving themselves of any wrongdoing. There is also talk of reclaiming the swastika as a symbol of freedom, citing its origins in Mongolia before the Third Reich adopted it. The observational style of these sequences puts the audience in an uncomfortable position, forcing them to parse Gerel Khas’s politics for themselves.
The approach changes when the documentary focuses on Byamba as an individual. The tone shifts from observational to confessional, with the camera moving closer to the subject, producing intimate and revealing results. Whether captured directly or in voice-over, Byamba is bursting with vulnerable emotions and leaves behind the determined attitude she showed during her crusades.
As that mask lifts, she reveals how the surrender of others has always dominated her life. Her mother died at a young age, her father subsequently abstained from his duties as a caregiver and finally the untimely death of her young husband. Byamba’s father was a guard on the Chinese border; her husband died in an accident in a mine run by the Chinese. Byamba never directly connects those personal tragedies to her work with Gerel Khas. Instead, she exposes her concerns; the filmmakers refuse the opportunity to psychoanalyze her actions and let her face tell the story.
As “Daughter of Genghis” continues, Byamba’s son, Temeulen, becomes another central subject. The film is no longer a portrait of a nationalist agitator, but rather a story of a mother and her son. Unlike his Byamba, Temeulen, who is six years old when the film begins, knows exactly what he wants: his mother’s smartphone and all the video games on it, plus more time with his parent. In that order.
Despite always asking for her time, Byamba initially seems too busy with her work with Gerel Khas to give her son proper attention. Were the sins of the fathers repeated in another generation? The film never falls into such easy generalizations. Instead, the camera remains a sensitive observer of these two people. As the years pass, their relationship becomes the focus – not just of the film, but of Byamba himself.
“Daughter of Genghis” may start out as a sensational story about extreme nationalism, but Poulsen and Als trust their subject to tell her own story and expand the film beyond that premise. What they ultimately end up with is a patient portrait of how grief can become violent anger, and how other relationships can flourish in its wake. In that sense, the documentary is a rediscovery of something most people experience, told with empathetic specificity for this particular mother and son.
