I first saw Mongolian Ping Pong at the Pusan International Film Festival in Korea last October and immediately afterward lamented to my co-screener that my friends would be so unlucky if they had to live the rest of their existences never to witness this filmic masterpiece. Because how often do these foreign films ever get a chance to cross that big wide gulf (and I mean cultural, of course)? Then again, I had also just suffered through seven hours of chaff before coming across this gem—I mean wheat. And maybe also unwittingly consumed half a bag of mold. Yes, people, a bag of mold-covered dried squid (a delicacy in Korea—the squid, not the mold), gobbled up in hunger and hurry without me ever actually looking inside the bag (until much, much later).

But I digress. I loved this movie.

In the vein of The Gods Must Be Crazy, seven-year-old Bilike finds an unlikely object in a creek while fetching a pail of water on the Mongolian plateaus. After much rumination and extreme close-up shots of this alien artifact, the sweet chubby youngster runs home to bask in the wisdom of his warm, nurturing grandmother, who is obviously nuts or a big fat liar, since she fools the poor kid into believing it is a Glowing Pearl sent from the Gods farther up river. Way to go grandma, because it only subjects Bilike and his cute-as-buttons posse of sweet little munchkins to prompt ridicule by the local tough-as-nails bullies since they can clearly see that, duh, it is most definitely neither glowing nor a pearl.

Come to find out, the weird spherical translucent oddity is actually… a ping-pong ball. (And they say you can't learn anything from the movies.) The rest of the film sends the adorable little rascals on an adventure of grand scope and scheme along the ravishingly beautiful steppes of—where are we—oh yeah, Mongolia—steppes, plateaus, mountainous range-y, you know—exotic.

It's a really sweet, sweet movie, without ever getting too saccharine or condescending (unless you're supremely jaded and you hate movies with sumptuous cinematography, so-cute-you-want-to-nibble-their-earlobes-off first-time kid actors, and a fairy-tale ascent). You'll love watching it and so will your organic-peanut-butter-and-one-hundred-percent-real-fruit-jelly-sandwich-loving kids. This also will probably be the first time you'll get to see a pee scene that is integral to the plot.

Lastly, if you've never heard it before, and you are anything like me, you will be astounded at how cool Mongolian sounds. Why didn't they offer THAT at my school?

Kate Bryant