Ze is in his last year of high school, and he is a 17-year-old shaman. One day, he meets Marla, a delicate but distrustful young woman, who has come to visit Ze’s spirit because of her illness.

Ze falls into a naïve and intoxicating love. When Marla rejects his affection, Ze confronts for the first time the limits of spirituality, love and his evolution.

"Ze" is a sober portrait of teenage life in today's Ulaanbaatar.

In 2014, I met a 21-year-old shaman named Uranbold who turned my previous experiences with shamans on its head. I was fascinated by his duality and the enormous burden he carried. Shamans must balance two lives: guiding people who come to them with various problems, in addition to social and personal life.

With Uranbold in mind, I mapped out Ze, to show what it means to grow up in contemporary Mongolia, where most people lead a precarious life, where shamans play a major role in providing guidance. It would be easy to exaggerate certain exotic aspects of my culture, but I find it more interesting to create a story around Ze as an individual: shamanism is just one piece of the puzzle in his coming of age.

Although Ze is a shaman, the film will not venture into metaphysics. The camera will track him through the unpaved streets of his neighbourhood, the Soviet-style classrooms and the modern bars, to convey the instability of his world marked by violence, but also love and friendship.