Documentarian Gabrielle Brady immerses herself in the act of collaborative storytelling, working alongside her subjects to bring their truth to life in an act of radical hybrid filmmaking. In her latest film, The Wolves Always Come at Night, we follow Davaa (Davaasuren Dagvasuren) and Zaya (Otgonzaya Daashzeveg), parents to four children who work as nomadic goat herders in the Bayankhongor region of Mongolia. Their land endures harsh winters and sharp summers, and as we witness in the film, receives the brunt of the impact of storms that roll in from the Gobi Desert. It’s these increasing storm events that force Davaa to question whether he will have to engage in the culture-disconnecting act of relocating his family to the city for work.
As with her previous film, The Island of the Hungry Ghosts, The Wolves Always Come at Night sees Brady continue her exploration of individuals who are worn and weathered by a rapidly shifting world that inflicts change upon them, untethering them from the connection to land and culture that they have maintained for generations and setting them adrift from their communities, and most cruelly, their families.
Before this urban migration disconnection event takes place, Brady, alongside cinematographer Michael Latham, immerses us in the life of Davaa and Zaya as they tend to their goat herd during birthing season. With a calming quiet tone, Davaa and his children observe from afar the goats as they graze on the land, reading their intentions by the way they move or the shifting blow of the wind. Editor Katharina Fiedler shifts us from one moment to the next in an act of gentle breathing, in and out, calmly from a scene of herd monitoring to a scene of Davaa providing birthing support to a crowning nanny.
An evolving storm forms the breaking point of Davaa’s story, leading him to set free his herd of horses, while nature deals with dispersing his goats. After the winds settle, Davaa takes to scouting the land with a fellow herder. What follows is a sequence steeped in inevitability which sees Brady employ a layer of muted devastation. When Davaa stumbles upon the scattered carcasses of his lost herd, there is no immediate sense of grief or pain, but instead feel the grains of histories hourglass spilling out once more, as if we’re not just witnesses a cruel loss of animal life, but as if the way of life of nomadic herders is being blown away.
A Western eye may look at these moments and apply words like ‘serene’ or ‘peaceful’ to them, words that skew towards romanticising the lives of Davaa and Zaya. But, to call it a ‘way of life’ is to suggest that this is a choice that Davaa and Zaya have made. These are not people seeking the ‘wanderlust’ of a farming life, to reconnect with nature and partake in clean living; no, these are people for whom nomadic herding is in their blood. What Brady, Davaa, and Zaya (who are co-credited as writers on the film) are asking audiences to bear witness to is the disintegration of a way of life, as if Davaa is part of the last cowboys of Mongolia who are on their to becoming part of history, a legend transformed into a song to be sung by lone karaoke singers crooning to a crowd of one as they reminisce about the past.
While a romantic notion about their herding practices can be gleaned by a less engaged viewer, the reality is that this is a life lived with worry and concern. After the days spent with Davaa and Zaya, we are invited to spend the night with them as well, where Davaa talks through his process with Zaya, seeking a form of council and support. Zaya’s role with the herd is as integral as Davaa’s, making her listening an active act of guidance that informs how they will live their lives. Equally so, as a young family, Davaa and Zaya are not alone on the plains, with fellow herders swaying into their communally focused daily practices.
It’s in these private moments that Davaa voices his recognition that for the family to continue, he will need to move away from goat herding and into the city for work. A voiceless, nameless almost-acquaintance has promised Davaa work, and while he reluctantly has resigned himself to this fate, there is a level of apprehension and concern that he is about to step into a world of exploitation. As time is swept forward once more by the desert winds, we next see Davaa draped in high-vis attire, set to work on the blight of the modern world: a mining site.
In yet another moment of quiet grieving, Davaa is dwarfed by a pile of mined materials. A manager (a word that feels so distinctly American and manufactured when uttered in these Mongolian cities) appears to check in on Davaa’s stilted form, stuck in a depressed state. Davaa can’t help but respond that this is land that should not be turned or disturbed, it is nature. We know that Davaa cannot be defiant in the face of these mining behemoths, after all, it is he who needs their work, and their terraforming titans will continue their acts of turning the past, present, and future into rubble.
The sub-genre of climate change documentaries has proliferated throughout the years, yet few filmmakers are assessing the intertwined complexity of the catastrophe in the way that Gabrielle Brady does with The Wolves Always Come at Night. Brady bookends the film with shots of Davaa riding his magnificent stallion, unkempt mane and all, across the plains, conjuring the sight of the shepherd of the land at flight, and in the process, this collaborative team hammers home the notion that this is yet another form of generational culture eking out of existence as a result of climate driven migration.
Brady never leans into the despair of the moment, but instead asks the audience to acknowledge the daily mourning that many of us endure as we are all pulled along a continued pilgrimage into our global climate catastrophe. At its quiet close, The Wolves Always Come at Night leaves you with a sombre feeling of helpless inevitability, and maybe this is the cruellest result of the film; previously a documentary like this would illicit a tortured response where audiences would say ‘we simply must do something to stop this from happening’, and while many may protest or feel their vote will change the world for the better, the reality is that we have each been forced into a state of inaction and servitude, reluctantly drawn into the creep of capitalism simply to keep the machine moving.
Powerful collaborative filmmaking like this is a rarity to be treasured.
Director: Gabrielle Brady
Featuring: Davaasuren Dagvasuren, Otgonzaya Dashzeveg
Writers: Davaasuren Dagvasuren, Otgonzaya Dashzeveg, Gabrielle Brady
Cinematographer: Michael Latham
Editor: Katharina Fiedler