The Eagle Huntress 2016

     The Nurgaiv family lives on the Mongolian steppe and they are nomads.  They live in a yurt in the Altai Mountains during the milder months and they have a house in town where they live in the winter.  The parents have Aisholpan and she is 13 years old.  They also have a younger son and daughter.  Aisholpan and the two younger children are in boarding school for 5 days during the school year and they return home on the weekend.  Rys is a seventh generation eagle hunter and he is teaching Aisholpan to also become an eagle hunter.  Eagle hunting is a tradition going back centuries.  The Golden Eagle Festival is a competition held every year with all the eagle hunters in this region entering to win medals.  There has never been a female to enter this competition.  Many of the elders do not agree with Aisholpan training for this type of hunting and entering the competition.

     The scenery of this region is very beautiful and the winters can be very harsh.  Families work hard to sustain themselves and take care of their animals.  Before the competition, Aisholpan and her father go into the mountains to obtain an eaglet for her to start training.  They need to be careful of a second eaglet in the nest and also the mother eagle.  After the competition, they go into the mountains during the winter to train her eagle in fox hunting.  Aisholpan is not the only woman eagle hunter and there have been others through the years but they also faced acceptance problems.  

87 min, Doc directed by Otto Bell, narrated by Daisy Ridley with Aisholpan Nurgaiv, Rys Nurgiv, Kuksyegyen Almagul, Boshai Dalaikhan. 

Note:  Imdb 7.5 out of 10, 92% critic 86% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert 3*, Amazon 4.7* out of 5* with 207 reviews, The Guardian 2* review by Wendy Ide, Metacritic 72 out of 100 with 26 critics 6.4 out of 10 with 7 reviews.

Special Note:  Filmed in Mongolia.  Daisy Ridley saw an early cut of this film and she loved it.  She became the executive producer and the narrator.  Daisy Ridley was in Star Wars: The Force Awakens as the character Rey.