Aisholpan Nurgaiv is a 13-year-old girl living with her nomadic family in Mongolia’s Altai mountains, a harsh, unforgiving place of isolation and physical duress. For centuries, her Kazakh family’s tribe has hunted for food and fur with the assistance of golden eagles they train from a young age. Although eagle hunting is traditionally a male purview, Aisholpan has always taken to it and, along with her father, has decided it’s time for her to adopt and train an eagle of her own.
If Aisholpan’s story, told in “The Eagle Huntress,” sounds like a heroine’s journey worthy of fiction at its most mythic and stirring, it most certainly is. But the tale happens to be true. Making a breathtakingly impressive feature-directing debut, documentarian Otto Bell traveled to the far northwest corner of Mongolia to observe Aisholpan not only as she tamed and enlisted the loyalty of an imposing bird of prey but also as she overcame the ingrained sexism of her elders — all while maintaining the same dazzling, serene smile.
With cinematography that soars, swoops and canters across Mongolia’s lunar landscape along with the film’s subjects, “The Eagle Huntress” introduces Aisholpan while she’s at school, in a town so far from her family’s ger, or yurt, that she stays in the dorm all week. Once her father comes to fetch her on his motorcycle, her mind is on mastering the art and cultural practice of eagle hunting.
“The Eagle Huntress” eventually finds Aisholpan competing at a hitherto men-only eagle hunting competition and, later, taking her eagle out for its first bona fide hunt. The competition scenes are particularly fun to watch: Not only are the feats of precision and fearlessness on display utterly captivating, but Bell also includes a wittily edited montage of men dismissing Aisholpan’s skills one minute, only to be forced to eat their words.
“The Eagle Huntress” offers inspiration in equal measure, taking the audience on a beautiful, thrilling journey to a part of the world that it still largely inaccessible. And it introduces them to a young woman who gives bravery a bracing, unforgettable face.
