Program Note
This is a golden opportunity to watch Mongolian movie. At an elementary school in Mongolia, Batzorig presents his summer-vacation assignment, which is writing an essay of more than one thousand words, in front of his classmates because his essay was the best among them. The title is ‘Young Detectives’. Batzorig interestingly wove the experiences during his last summer camp. The movie takes the form of a story within a story, which goes back and forth from the scenery of the classroom to the experiences in the summer camp. The camp in Batzorig’s essay is full of stories. The classmates seem to fear as well as enjoy the tension aroused by Batzorig’s story, and they get to learn peer group culture by sharing this tension. Among the stories, there is, of course, a scare story: a spooky story about a ghost from a spiteful woman appearing and disappearing from a mountain at the back of the camp. The children plan to check the reality of the ghost as if they became detectives. Meanwhile, there is also an event in which sausages from the camp cafeteria disappear. The children again immerse into playing detectives, doubting each other and trying all kinds of reasoning. These children try to dig into accidents of the camp as detectives with their friends, which is one of many role-plays that all of us played in our childhood. It would be nice to watch the play of charming and lovely children altogether, regardless of age. (JUNG Ji-hye)