The Bogd Khan mountain rises immediately south of Ulaanbaatar and has been treated as a protected sacred massif for centuries. In one of its wooded valleys stood Manzushir, a substantial monastic complex whose temples were destroyed during the political purges of the socialist era. What the visitor finds today is a landscape of ruins: stone foundations traced in the grass, terraces climbing the slope, a great bronze cauldron once used to cook for hundreds of monks, and painted Buddhist images on the surrounding boulders that survived because they were part of the rock itself. A single temple has been restored and serves as a museum. The film treats the site as both memorial and landscape, moving between archaeological evidence of what was lost and the cedar and larch forest, streams and viewpoints of the valley. It is an unusually direct account of the destruction of Mongolian monastic culture. Filmed in 4K with aerial coverage.
