After an acclaimed feature film debut with City of the Wind in 2023, director Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir returns to the short film format with A South Facing Window, featured in the 2026 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (LAAPFF). In this film, she casts an eye on her homeland, Mongolia, by centering a young couple searching for a new home in Ulaanbaatar.
The rapid development and constant gridlock of the city mirrors the relationship of Azaa and Shagai. While working to support their family and to expand to a new apartment, they find the foundation of their relationship eroding, the channels between their hearts blocked off by disappointment and resentment. The couple is looking for a new apartment with sufficient light, but really what they are looking for is the sense of home and recognition within each other.
The tension between the couple builds in the small moments like when Azaa’s mother comments on how Shagai should have picked his wife up from the airport, when Azaa refuses to relinquish their daughter Sondor when Shagai tries to get her to do homework, when Azaa anxiously checks her phone during an apartment tour, presumably waiting for a response from her husband, and the passive-aggressive texts between the two. The unresolved conflicts culminate into a full blown argument in the car while stuck in traffic, and Shagai, feeling powerless and enraged, takes out his anger by aggressively honking. As if by karma, the consequences for his actions are swift and knock him into his senses. Instead of redirecting that anger against each other, the two turn towards each other for the first time in the film. The simple scene of them embracing in the car, in the middle of traffic while other cars attempt to maneuver around them, is poignant.
The camera then pans to the occupants of other cars, lingering just enough to spark curiosity about who the occupants are and what they’re feeling, and then passing over to the next car. It’s a reminder that all the cars you’re stuck in traffic next to contain people who are just trying to get home, people with their own stories and their own struggles with the messiness of being human. It also says something about a society that fragments these shared experiences into the impersonal nature of cars and towering high rises.
The film doesn’t give an exact resolution, but it hints at a hopeful new beginning, one with more fond smiles and reaching towards each other. Did they find a new home? Maybe. But more importantly, they are finding their way back to each other.
