Silent City Driver (2024)

Mongolia’s official submission for Best International Film during the 98th Academy Awards, Chimeegüi khotyn jolooch aka Silent City Driver tells the story of Myagmar (Tuvshinbayar Amartuvshin), a 32-year-old man who spent fourteen of those years in prison for murder, during which his mother passed away, and he was severely beaten to the point of sustaining permanent physical damage. Broken both in body and spirit, Myagmar prefers interacting with dogs rather than people, but he needs to work to live, so he gets a job driving a hearse for a local funeral home. Gradually, through the job, Myagmar starts to make friends, first with an 18-year-old monk named Sodoo (Munkhbat Bar-Erdene), then with a blind carpenter who crafts the coffins for the funeral home. But it’s the carpenter’s daughter Saruul (Ganbaatar Narantsetseg) who really captures his attention. He ends up following her when she sneaks out at night, and discovers that she is not a medical student as her father thinks, but is actually working in the city’s sleazy sex industry and is involved in a scandal involving a politician. There’s a shared melancholy between them, but before things end in tragedy, we’re treated to nudecomer Ganbaatar’s hoots and glutes in some skintastic scenes and they are a sight to behold. Even under the circumstances, Silent City Driver is sure to get your engine running!