Rendezvous pairs up the film Veins of the World with Blues Side on the Blue Sky, a short that posits itself as an authentic look at how a rural Indonesian family deals with one of its members who has a mental illness. And they do that with a sparse script and the occasional tableaux, letting the family’s expressions reveal everything.

Veins of the World has its own version of authenticity, a gentle one, which starts off with Amra (Bat-Ireedui Batmunkh), a boy who wants to in Mongolia’s Got Talent, which is doable even if he lives where the gold mining companies try to encroach on the steppes where he, his family, and community live. Despite these changes, tradition lives on.

Amra’s life changes when he and his father Erdene (Yalalt Namsrai) get into a car accident, an event that takes the latter’s life. The film then astutely examines a community that loses a leader. The community mourns through what seems like rituals, although others take is death as a way to go against the man’s beliefs. Amra mourns differently.

And that mourning coincides with the changes in Mongolian life. Director and co-writer Byambasuren Davaa looks at the machismo side in all of this, specifically in Amra who somehow develops a sense of pride in trying to contribute to his family. She also looks at his encounters with the members of the the mining industry, depicting those workers’ interesting scrappiness.

Family also figures in well here, like Amra’s relationship with his mother Zaya (Enerel Tumen). Both lose someone in their lives and both have to figure out how the other is dealing. But since Amra’s a child, Zaya’s the one doing the work. All of this takes place in the Mongolian steppe, a landscape as beautifully vulnerable as its characters.