Screening Dates: Sunday, November 16, 2025, 2:00 p.m. / Sunday, December 21, 2025, 6:30 p.m. / Sunday, January 11, 2026, 6:30 p.m.

Director: Ulrike Ottinger
Screenplay: Ulrike Ottinger
Cast: Delphine Seyrig, Irm Hermann, Peter Kern, Barbara Valentin

Germany / 1989 / 165 min. / Color / German / English and Turkish Subtitles

In Joan of Arc of Mongolia, Ulrike Ottinger takes the ethnographic documentary form and infuses it with irony, blending it with feminist fiction and weaving it together on her own surreal and stylized plane. The film follows a group of European women traveling on the Trans-Siberian Railway who are captured by a tribe of Mongolian women.

Ottinger, who draws connections between the female heroes of Mongolian legends and Jeanne d’Arc, uses abundant repetition and patterns of similarity in the film. While presenting a visually impressive film, it makes us think about the East-West dichotomy and the representation of the “other” through shifting power dynamics.

Johanna D’Arc of Mongolia, which earned Ottinger the distinction of being the first foreign director to obtain filming permission in Mongolia, is also the last film starring Delphine Seyrig, the iconic face of European arthouse cinema, with whom the director frequently collaborated.

*We would like to thank the Goethe-Institute for their contribution to the program.

** The film will be screened within the framework of European Film Month.