While certain Mongolians are well-known in Japan, especially the sumo wrestlers who have come to dominate the sport in the past 20 years, Mongolia the country mostly draws a blank in the popular mind.
Kentaro, a multicultural actor who goes by one name and has Hollywood credits (“Rush Hour 3,” “Taxi 2”), did not exactly set out to educate the audience with his first film as a director, “Under the Turquoise Sky,” but he still offers an affectionate, visually sumptuous love letter to Mongolia’s land, people and culture. Whether it motivates more Japanese to visit Mongolia (about 22,500 did in 2017) I have no idea, though its beauty shots of the wide open Mongolian landscape, made with an 8K video camera, may prompt many a Google search.
Co-scripted by Kentaro and Amra Baljinnyam, a Mongolian actor who also stars in the film, the story is simplicity itself: A sickly corporate titan, Saburo (Akaji Maro), decides to send his spoiled grandson Takeshi (Yuya Yagira) to Mongolia to search for the daughter he fathered with a local woman 70 years ago, when he was a World War II prisoner of war.