FilmNomad is an international film development lab for Mongolian filmmakers — a nine-month fellowship, an international film forum, and a pitch aboard a train crossing the Gobi Desert. Open to filmmakers at any stage of their career, with no age limit.
FilmNomad is an international film development lab based in Mongolia. It supports Mongolian directors, writers and producers through training, project development, pitch preparation and sustained access to the international industry. The programme is open to filmmakers at any stage of their career, with no age limit.
Founded in 2023, the lab works with a new group of filmmakers each year across three connected activities: a nine-month fellowship, the FilmNomad Film Forum, and the Gobi Train Pitch. Since the first edition, more than 300 filmmakers have taken part, 100 have been certified through Sundance Collab, and twenty projects have been developed and presented to the international industry in Berlin, Cannes and Locarno.
FilmNomad was created after its founder's own experience at Open Doors, the Locarno Film Festival's co-production platform, where she took part in the 2021 Open Doors Hub with The Water Garden (Tsuurum), directed by Ikhbayar Urchuud. That programme demonstrated what a structured development environment can do for a project and for a career — and how few filmmakers in Mongolia were in a position to reach one. The lab was built to create that environment at home, and to bring the international industry to Ulaanbaatar rather than expect filmmakers to find their own way to it.
In June 2026 the Locarno Film Festival selected Nomintuya Baasankhuu as one of four participants in the inaugural edition of Open Doors Connect, alongside producers from Benin, Madagascar and Brazil, in a two-month programme mentored by Fibby Kioria and Mitchell Harper.
Nomintuya Baasankhuu is a Mongolian producer and the founder of FilmNomad, which she established in 2023 and has since developed into an annual lab working in partnership with the Sundance Institute and Berlinale Talents.
She produced The Water Garden (Tsuurum), selected for the Open Doors Hub at Locarno in 2021, and is a producer on Jinji's Birthday, In the Mirage of Yellow Dune and Snowie. In 2026 she was selected for the first edition of Locarno's Open Doors Connect.
She is an Asia 21 Next Generation Fellow (2024) and a World Economic Forum Cultural Leader (2016), studied at Columbia University, and previously served as advisor to Mongolia's Minister of Culture.
The FilmNomad Fellowship is a nine-month programme for Mongolian directors, writers and producers developing a new film project. It is open to filmmakers at any stage of their career, with no age limit. Each edition opens in October at the Ulaanbaatar International Film Festival and runs for nine months.
Participants follow a structured path from script to pitch. The opening months are dedicated to craft: masterclasses in screenwriting, directing and producing, delivered with the Sundance Institute through Sundance Collab and available in Mongolian, so that the quality of a filmmaker's English never determines the quality of their training. The programme then moves into project development — individual mentoring with international tutors, written feedback on every project, and group sessions in which participants work on one another's material. The closing months prepare the projects for the international market: packaging, materials in English, and pitch training.
The fellowship is built around a cohort. Participants develop their projects side by side across the nine months, and the working relationships formed between directors, writers and producers regularly outlast the edition itself. Selection is made by an international committee: ten fiction and documentary projects each year, together with one short film.
The fellowship concludes with the FilmNomad Film Forum and the Gobi Train Pitch. Selected projects are subsequently presented at the lab's international partner events, among them Berlinale Talents, the Marché du Film in Cannes and Open Doors in Locarno.
The FilmNomad Film Forum is a one-day industry gathering held in Ulaanbaatar each summer. International funds, labs, markets, sales companies and festivals present their programmes and selection criteria; Mongolian producers, institutions and filmmakers present the state of the local industry; and the day is given over to panels, case studies and meetings between the two.
The Forum closes with panels on international co-production, development and sales, the presentation of the year's selected projects, and the Sundance Collab certificate ceremony. It is open to the entire Mongolian film sector. Guests and participants then travel on together to the Gobi Train Pitch.
The train leaves Ulaanbaatar in the afternoon with the participants and the mentors in the same carriage. Introductions are made before anyone has anywhere else to be.
Each project is presented to the whole group — seven minutes to pitch, five minutes of response from the mentors — with the steppe running past the window.
The train arrives overnight. Participants wake in a ger camp, where the second part of the programme takes place.
Four workshops across the day, each led by one of the international mentors on their own field of work.
Thirty minutes with every mentor, in rotation: script, packaging, financing, co-production and festival strategy.
Riding out from the camp at the end of the working day, across country most of the guests have only ever seen in films.
A visit to the spiritual energy centre of the Gobi, a place of pilgrimage in Mongolia and the still point of the whole programme.
On the train back, mentors and participants go through the projects together and agree what happens next for each one.
The last night on board belongs to the group. By Ulaanbaatar, nobody is a stranger.
The edition closes in the city with the announcement of the three selected projects, which go on to be presented at partner events abroad.
The train leaves Ulaanbaatar in the afternoon with the participants and the mentors in the same carriage. Introductions are made before anyone has anywhere else to be.
Each project is presented to the whole group — seven minutes to pitch, five minutes of response from the mentors — with the steppe running past the window.
The train arrives overnight. Participants wake in a ger camp, where the second part of the programme takes place.
Four workshops across the day, each led by one of the international mentors on their own field of work.
Thirty minutes with every mentor, in rotation: script, packaging, financing, co-production and festival strategy.
Riding out from the camp at the end of the working day, across country most of the guests have only ever seen in films.
A visit to the spiritual energy centre of the Gobi, a place of pilgrimage in Mongolia and the still point of the whole programme.
On the train back, mentors and participants go through the projects together and agree what happens next for each one.
The last night on board belongs to the group. By Ulaanbaatar, nobody is a stranger.
The edition closes in the city with the announcement of the three selected projects, which go on to be presented at partner events abroad.
Ten features and documentaries are selected each edition, plus one short film — because a short is how most filmmakers launch a career, and it deserves the same room as a feature. Below is the 2026 line-up, in the order it pitched between Ulaanbaatar and the Gobi.
The projects awarded at the last two editions, all currently seeking co-production, financing and sales partners. Full one-pagers, screenplays and directors' previous work available on request. Three of these projects pitch on the Palais stage at the Marché du Film, 13 May 2026, with the Mongolian National Film Council.
After her daughter's first words reveal the devastating impact of societal pressure, a perfectionist mother stops bowing to judgment and starts a darkly comedic rebellion against the standard of "normal."
Three generations of one Mongolian family, tracing the invisible inheritance of emotional patterns that bind parents and children — and asking whether we can choose to pass on something different.
Mongolia, 1997. A young mother brought to a house built on the ashes of a Stalinist-purged nunnery begins to perceive what her geologist husband cannot: a three-headed entity locked in arrested suffering.
A young woman running from her past by leaving Mongolia forever, and a young man running from his by coming back, find unexpected solace in each other's presence for one night in Ulaanbaatar.
In the depths of winter two sisters secretly sell books in crowded public places, turning the darkness of what is happening to them into something full of light and wonder.
In the Gobi's endless void, a widowed herdswoman's loneliness finds brief relief when a stranger arrives — but he keeps leaving and returning, in a cycle of hope and abandonment that threatens her son's entire world.
FilmNomad becomes a lab. Berlinale Talents joins as an official partner, twenty projects enter development, and each is assessed by four international advisors before the pitch to Sainshand.
The Sundance Institute partnership begins. 56 filmmakers take the first fully Mongolian-subtitled Sundance Collab pathway; 33 projects compete; ten are selected and pitched on the train to Sainshand.
Conceived with Cineuropa. 221 applications, 100 filmmakers trained online, ten scripts and ten projects taken through on-site workshops — ending with the first pitching session on a train to the Gobi energy centre.
Nomintuya Baasankhuu joins producers from Benin, Madagascar and Brazil in the inaugural edition of Locarno's Open Doors Connect, a two-month programme mentored by Fibby Kioria and Mitchell Harper.
The programme brings together film professionals from Benin, Madagascar, Brazil and Mongolia to build South-South collaboration between emerging film markets.
The first FilmNomad × Berlinale Talents Brunch & Pitch Session, at the 76th Berlinale, marks the shift from training programme to a full development lab with international ambitions.
Two finalist projects presented at the Mongolian Films Pitch Session, and the ten selected projects of the 2024–2025 edition introduced to the international industry.
On the Screen International pitching session with the Mongolian National Film Council, and what happened to the first three fellows after the 2023 edition.
The full account of the first edition by Valerio Caruso — 221 applications, four steps, and the first pitching session on a train to the Gobi energy centre.
Why the lab was founded, and the plan to turn it into a permanent annual development programme and a bridge to the international industry.
The call opens each September. Open to Mongolian filmmakers in all genres — fiction, documentary, animation and experimental — with a project attached.
FilmNomad is building an endowment so the lab is funded from income rather than from grant cycles, and carries on edition after edition. Seven naming opportunities are attached to it — three flagship programmes and four annual awards. A named programme carries your name in every edition that follows. Write to us and we will send the full brief.
The Sundance Collab × FilmNomad training stage of the fellowship, delivered in Mongolian.
The annual day that brings the world's funds and festivals to Ulaanbaatar.
The world's first mobile film development platform, Ulaanbaatar to the Gobi.
To discuss a naming opportunity, write to nomintuya@filmnomad.mn. Write to us →
We are looking for minority co-producers and sales partners for the current slate, broadcasters for two feature projects, post-production support for Snowie, mentors for the next edition, and donors who want to put their name on a programme or an award.
Chingeltei district, 2nd khoroo / Ikh Naiman Sharga, building 6a, apt 7 / Ulaanbaatar 15171, Mongolia