Once the top horsemen, friends Saina and Hasa now perform in traditional horse shows to make a living. Unlike Hasa who sells all his horses and sheep after deciding to move to the city, Saina tries to hold on to his beloved horses, shuttling between his farm and the performance arena. But this winter, which came late due to global warming, feels unusually harsh following a drought. With his father’s gambling debts and drinking problem, as well as his separation from his wife, nothing seems to be going Saina’s way. Director Jiang Xiaoxuan, born and raised in Inner Mongolia, cast her friend who was a horseman for her film, which depicts the lives of Mongolians pushed out from the grasslands to the cities and from the cities to tourist spots. The plaintive image of him riding a white horse with a bottle of liquor in hand, straddling the yellow centerline of a road filled with cars, lingers long in memory. (CHOI Eun)