THE LANDSCAPE AS STAR

The call came over the walkie-talkie: the vultures were feeding. Byambasuren Davaa and her film crew scrambled into their SUVs and sped to where they had left goat carcasses to attract the scavengers for a scene in her new movie "Mongolian Dog." The bright, midday light turned out to be too intense for filming on the endless grasslands of Mongolia. So Davaa and her six-person German crew took turns watching through binoculars as the birds ripped apart the carrion.

Light isn't the only challenge at the edge of the cinematic universe. The two-day drive from Ulan Bator damaged lenses and booms, delaying filming while replacements were flown in from Germany. The children and dogs who star in the film have trouble following their cues. But none of that phases the shy, 32-year-old director, whose improvisational style and eye for natural beauty drew her to this remote location and have helped turn her into Mongolia's hottest new filmmaker. "Mongolian Dog" is "about animals, the landscape, people, tradition," says Davaa, whom everyone calls Byamba. "It's about the evolution from traditional to modern."

In other words, it's about Mongolia itself. Davaa says that the dogs of "Mongolian Dog" symbolize the changes her homeland is going through. The animals are immensely important to Mongolians, whose tradition holds that people are reincarnated from the canine. "You never hit a dog because you never know if that is going to be your kid," she says. But globalization is changing that relationship. As people move to the cities, dogs are losing their once vital role as shepherds. Abandoned by families, many dogs go wild and breed with wolves, creating smarter, more cunning wolves that no longer fear people. "I don't want to judge," she says. "I just want to preserve the moment, before it changes."

She is certainly well poised to do just that. Davaa first captured the film world's fancy last year with "The Story of the Weeping Camel," about a nomad family in the Gobi Desert whose camel rejects its newborn. Originally made for German cable television, producers sensed they had a hit and instead released the low-budget work on the festival circuit, where it won awards in Europe and the United States. "Mongolian Dog" represents Davaa's graduation project from the Munich Film School, where she started in 2000 after three years at the Mongolian Film Academy. "I like seeing my country from a foreign perspective," she says. "It makes me proud of our traditions. I never would have understood this if I hadn't gone to Germany."

Globalization may be one of Davaa's favorite themes, but it's also a major source of her commercial success. During the communist era, Mongolia had a vibrant film industry, supported almost exclusively by subsidies from the Soviet Union. When communism collapsed in 1990, so, too, did Mongolian filmmaking. Equipment fell apart, labs closed and once renowned filmmakers found themselves out of work. Some turned to erotica; others sought work on foreign productions filmed in Mongolia. "But they weren't really Mongolian," sniffs Zolbayar Dorj, head of Mongofilm Studio.

Still, the country never lost its passion for the movies. Ulan Bator is an isolated city of barely 900,000, but it has five film schools and more than 200 production studios. "Mongolia has a lot of talent. There are real performers all over the country," says Christopher Giercke, a German filmmaker who splits his time between Mongolia and Nepal. "In the countryside, everyone performs, at weddings or whenever. The nomads love the movies, and people used to ride five hours by horse to see a film."

Now the film industry is looking to the international community for support. A new, modern theater financed by a Korean movie-theater chain just opened in Ulan Bator, complete with popcorn and dried squid, a popular Korean snack. A 10 million joint Russian-Kazakh-Mongolian film about Genghis Kahn will start shooting this autumn. Mongolian filmmakers are beginning to look around the world for investors, and film students are increasingly following Davaa's lead and studying abroad. Solongo Jambin, general director of the Mongol Kino film school, points out that Mongolia simply does not have enough people to sustain an independent movie industry without creating movies with global appeal. "If you just do films for Mongolians, they won't go far," he says. "Hollywood makes films that people in the Congo and everywhere can understand. We need to find a way to make our films more understandable." Thanks to Davaa, Mongolia is well on its way.