There’s a tiny village in a sparsely populated desert region close to the border between Mongolia and China, and Hangai insists on staying there while his wife leaves the village when their daughter falls ill. Hangai is trying to drown his sorrows in alcohol when Korean refugee Choi Soon-hee and her son Chang-ho knock on his door. Chang-ho persists on staying with Hangai instead of wandering about from place to place, and they start to live together like a family. The original title of this film “Hyazgar”, which is a kind of tree and also means a border between deserts and grasslands in Mongol. Struggling in vain against the steady encroachment of the desert, their decision to stay on in this wasteland while living together like a family shows an allegory of today’s world. These three people, Hangai who lives apart from his own family and Soon-hee and Chang-ho who drift along after their escape, are all destined to wander around the border of life, meeting their fates in the tranquil stillness of the desert. (LEE Sang-yong)