London-based MetFilm Sales has acquired Mongolian filmmaker Khoroldorj Choijoovanchig’s debut feature documentary “Colors of White Rock” for worldwide sales representation. The film will have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival next month as part of the official documentary competition.
Sweeping over the Gobi Desert scarred by Mongolia’s mining boom, known as “Minegolia,” the film captures the story of Maikhuu, one of the rare women truck drivers working along the country’s hazardous coal roads. Her journey holds up a mirror to the human and environmental costs of “Minegolia.”
Producers Tessa Louise-Salomé and Luc Sorrel said: “From the very first images, we sensed we were witnessing something of immense scale and consequence, a story that extends far beyond the Gobi Desert, touching on forces both intimate and global: a vast human and environmental reality, revealed through Khoroldorj Choijoovanchig’s singular gaze and embodied in Maikhuu’s journey, where resilience intertwines with a deep connection to the land and a quiet yet powerful expression of female strength.”
MetFilm’s Zak Brilliant commented: “Khoroldorj Choijoovanchig has made a film of extraordinary beauty in an extraordinarily harsh landscape. ‘Colors of White Rock’ is at once a portrait of a woman and a reckoning with the human cost of the global resource economy. We cannot wait to share it with buyers around the world.”
“Colors of White Rock” marks Choijoovanchig’s first feature documentary, expanding on his short film “Lady of the Gobi” (2023), which won the British Documentary Grierson Award for Best Short Film. Where that film offered a glimpse into the lives of women working the Gobi coal routes, this feature-length work both broadens and deepens that story, following Maikhuu through the grinding rhythms of long-haul driving and into the intimate textures of motherhood and survival under industrial capitalism’s most unsparing pressures.
“Colors of White Rock” is produced by Louise-Salomé and Sorrel for Petite Maison Production, and co-produced by Choijoovanchig for iCity Films. The associate producer is Kate Kennelly. It is edited by Simon Le Berre. Music is by Gael Rakotondrabe. Art direction is by Louise-Salomé. The story is by Choijoovanchig, Chantal Perrin, Kate Kennelly and Louise-Salomé.
It is made with the participation of France Télévisions, and is supported by Alter-Ciné Foundation, Asian Cinema Fund, Catapult Film Fund, CNC, Doc Society Climate Story Fund, Inmaat Foundation, Mongolian Film Council, Procirep-Angoa, Sundance Institute Documentary Film Progra, and The Rogovy Foundation.
Source: variety.com
