Mongolian cinema has a really big history. But after the 1990s, it has been just left out. Before the 1990s, there was the Mongolian Film Factory and that’s why the government was supporting and producing all the films. After 1990, there was no funding from the government and so all the filmmakers had to go independent and  they were struggling to make films by themselves.

But now, it is getting better. As you know, we have a film-supporting law, which was effective from 2021. In this law, there is an incentive program and a film fund. Also, we just established the Mongolian National Film Council and now we are trying to support all the Mongolian filmmakers. It is getting better and better. There are more than 30 feature movies released in Mongolia every year and the industry is growing a lot.

So far, Mongolian film makers went to Cannes, Venice and Busan, and last week in Berlin and we are trying to introduce our law and incentive program and we are also trying to attract foreign filmmakers. In September 2022, the Council organized The fame tour, inviting some major production heads and managers such as Warner Bros, Netflix, Paramount, HBO, Discovery etc. The incentive program is attracting the attention of productions.

There are about 200 cinemas in the whole country of which about 45 in Ulaanbaatar. Mongolia has a lot of provinces and each has some theaters where someone can screen a movie in, so counting those, it is about a few hundreds.