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The Story of the Weeping Camel

2003 film directed by Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ152090
Source-derived summary

The Story of the Weeping Camel (Mongolian: Ингэн нулимс, Ingen nulims, "Tears of the Camel") is a 2003 Mongolian-language docudrama film distributed by ThinkFilm. It was released internationally in 2004. The film was directed and written by Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni. The plot is about a family of nomadic shepherds in the Gobi Desert trying to save the life of a rare white bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus) calf after it was rejected by its mother.

Plot

During spring, a family of nomadic shepherds assists the births of their camel herd. The last camel to calve this season has a protracted labor that persists for two days. With the assistance and intervention of the family, a rare white calf is born. This is the mother camel's first calving. Despite the efforts of the shepherds, the mother rejects the newborn, refusing it her milk and failing to establish a care-bond with it.

To restore harmony between the mother and calf, the nomadic family call upon the services of a group of lamas who perform a ritual with bread or dough 'effigies' (Standard Tibetan: torma) of the mother, the calf and the individual members of the family.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Story of the Weeping Camel” is 2003 film directed by Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Story, Weeping and Camel, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2003, 2004—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2003-06-29. For this dossier, Story, Weeping and Camel is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “2003 film directed by Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q152090. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2003 and 2004.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Story of the Weeping Camel”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Story of the Weeping Camel primary sources, The Story of the Weeping Camel archive and Story research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Story of the Weeping Camel”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from The Story of the Weeping Camel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.