STORM OVER ASIA

In British-occupied Mongolia in the 1920s, the young hunter Bair (Valéry Inkijinoff) is in possession of a manuscript that suggests he is a descendant of Genghis Khan. When he is captured, the English consider using him to control the Mongolian resistance more easily, but he ends up leading the revolt of his people…

Storm over Asia, a 1949 dubbed film, is part of Pudovkin’s ‘silent’ trilogy, which also includes The Mother and The End of St. Petersburg, ‘works all about the protagonist’s gradual awakening’. Thanks to Golovnya’s photography, ‘the beauty of the landscapes, whether steppe or taiga’, but also ‘its strongly anti-colonialist satire’, the film by Vselovod Pudovkin, one of the most studied film theorists who was also a director and actor, is ‘a song of rebellion’, enhanced by ‘its lyrical power’, the strength of the setting, and the skilful intertwining of history and myth’.