Almost a combination of documentary and dramatic fiction filmmaking, The Cave of the Yellow Dog takes place in the stunningly beautiful, but remote Mongolian countryside. It is the second film by Byambasuren Davaa, also the director of last year’s hugely popular The Story of the Weeping Camel. Similar in style and tone to her first film, Cave opens when six-year-old Nasal finds a small dog one day while out walking the steppes and brings him home to her family. The existence of strays wandering the countryside is a simple fact of life, blamed mostly on the deterioration of the traditional nomadic lifestyle which forces families to pack it all in and move to the city—often abandoning their dogs along the way. The trouble is, many of these dogs then grow up with, or are mixed offspring of, the wolves that increasingly attack and kill the sheep of what few nomadic herders are still left around. The bottom line to Nasal’s father—the dog must go. Nasal spends the next couple of days hiding the dog from her father as the family prepares to strike their summer camp and move on for the winter. When he realizes she has kept the dog, he ties it to a post and leaves it as the family loads up and pulls away. A very quick, very simple (and incredible creepy) potential family tragedy occurs that changes everything, however, reuniting father and daughter and determining the ultimate fate of the dog.