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Stunning cinematography bolsters an inspirational story in "The Eagle Huntress," a documentary about a teen girl pursuing a dream.
Aisholpan is a 13-year-old girl living in a nomadic tribe in Kazakhstan that has relied on eagles to hunt prey for generations. The techniques for capturing an eagle and training it to hunt have been passed down from father to son — but almost never to daughters. Aisholpan, with her supportive parents, bucks that tradition as she catches her own eagle, trains it for a competition with other hunters and ultimately tests her skills in the frozen wilderness.
Director Otto Bell gets some beautiful images of Aisholpan in the harsh Kazakh mountains and shows her happily and unassumingly going about her business with her eagle. Bell sometimes deploys some manipulative editing, needlessly underlining the sexism of the old hunters who defend the tradition that Aisholpan's boundary-breaking is challenging, and gets in the way of the simple charms of the girl's quest.
'The Eagle Huntress'
Opening Wednesday, Nov. 23, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas; rated G; 87 minutes.