Set in the frozen steppes of Mongolia, Khadak tells the epic story of Bagi, a young nomad confronted with his destiny to become a shaman. A plague strikes the animals and the nomads are forcibly relocated to desolate mining towns. Bagi saves the life of a beautiful coal thief, Zolzaya, and together they reveal the plague was a lie fabricated to eradicate nomadism. A sublime revolution ensues.
Long synopsis
Bagi, his mother and grandfather lead a serene life tending to their herds in the snow-swept Mongolian steppes. He has a gift, which is the uncanny ability to hear animals over great distances. Upon retrieving a lost sheep, Bagi has a disturbing premonition and suffers an epileptic fit. A shamaness manages to revive him then announces that his destiny is to become a shaman. Bagi rejects this supposed calling in spite of his grandfather's warning that denying such a destiny brings misfortune. Soon after, a military convoy roars over the horizon. An unidentifiable plague has struck. The nomads are all resettled in bleak mining towns and their animals are quarantined then slaughtered.
In the mining town, Bagi careens around on a motorcycle with sidecar delivering mail. His grandfather, now confined to their humble apartment, has fallen silent with sorrow. His mother, however, is decidedly content in her new job operating a colossal excavator machine in the open-pit mine. This fragile status quo is suddenly disturbed by the suicide of an elderly herdswoman.
Bagi saves the life of a beautiful coal thief, Zolzaya, and they end up on a coal train bound for the distant city. They are promptly arrested by soldiers who condemn them to hard labour on a road crew of young misfits who happen to be Zolzaya's friends. The shamaness, who has been watching Bagi from afar, gives him a disturbing jolt, which plunges him into an epileptic fit. He finds himself in a hospital for people suffering from the trauma of the relocations. A psychiatrist tells him that he suffers from epilepsy and can be treated. Soon enough, however, his sense of hearing reawakens. Whispering through the water pipes are the sounds of animals. Bagi tries desperately to convince other patients that he can hear animals still alive. Nobody heeds his cries and he is placed in solitary confinement. Bagi then slips into his first true shamanic journey and finds himself confronted by the shamaness in the setting of a devastated futuristic city. She arms him with a shaman's mirror. His soul struggles back through waterways and ruins but he cannot relocate his body. From within the labyrinth of the parallel world he struggles to reach Zolzaya. She immediately senses his presence and follows the signs he gently places in front of her. With his mirror he causes blue sacred scarves to fall by the hundreds from the sky. A breathtaking revolution ensues.
