After a particularly arduous birth, a mother camel refuses to care for its newborn colt, disrupting the livelihood of a family of Mongolian herders in the Gobi Desert. The family's two sons are dispatched on a journey to a far-off village to enlist the services of a musician, who will, according to legend, encourage the mother to nurse again.
It's about as exciting as it sounds, with the pseudo-documentary approach barely holding up the pretense of a story. It comes off like an extended National Geographic program (which helped produce the film), and the directors seem more interested in examining a culture of nomadic shepherds than enchanting us with fairy tales.
Real nomads were used instead of actors, and essentially were filmed living their regular lives. It may be of interest to those of us ensconced in too much technology, but this is hardly revolutionary filmmaking: Robert J. Flaherty was doing this kind of thing 80 years ago with Nanook of the North, and he came away with much more interesting results.