From Riverdance to restaurant flamenco performances, the phenomenon of cultures both protecting and exploiting their heritage by commercialising it into spectacles and sideshows is hardly unfamiliar. But it's unlikely you've seen this practice depicted against the stunning backdrop of the steppes of Mongolia, where the proud ancient tradition of warrior horsemanship is repackaged into rodeo-like spectaculars in rural areas where the talents they celebrate are rapidly dying out.

In her elegiac and strikingly beautiful debut, director Xiaoxuan Jiang follows one of these riders, Saina (a real-life rider playing a version of himself) as he tries to reconcile the pageantry and masculine competitiveness of his evening job at the fair with his hardscrabble daily life as a herdsman juggling an alcoholic father and a broken marriage in a world where modernity threatens to separate him from everything he knows and loves. Like, for example, his ageing but still agile white stallion.

For information on the full BFF24 programme visit: www.belfastfilmfestival.org