The Eagle Huntress (2016) documentary – Movie Review

Aisholpan is a thirteen-year-old nomadic Kazakh girl living in proximity to the snowy and treacherous Altai Mountains region of western Mongolia, who ends up being shown the ropes of becoming an 'eagle hunter' by her father, whose family has practiced the art for many generations, after the two end up capturing a female eaglet for her to train in the time-honored traditions of her forbears. Why this matters as a film is that it is extremely rare for a girl to be an eagle hunter, and further upending the patriarchal system of things, Aisholpan decides to enter an annual eagle hunting contest after training her eaglet in the ways of the millennia-old tradition.