Story of the Weeping Camel

After making a splash on the U.S. film-festival circuit (including our own local fest), this German documentary’s making a welcome solo return to arthouses. If you’re up for something in the vein of Winged Migration or The Saltmen of Tibet, don’t miss it this time around. It’s about a family of Mongolian camel-herders who face a crisis when its mama camel rejects her newborn. A cute-as-a-button boy named Ugna and his big brother travel to the big city (or what passes for such in Mongolia) to hire a violinist, apparently common practice in the Gobi Desert for soothing unmotherly camels. The cinema verite approach gives an intimate view of daily life in a culture that’s both strange and strangely familiar: Kids in Mongolia play games on the living-room rug too, but they use animal bones instead of Yahtzee dice. 3911 West 50th St., Edina, (952) 926-1621, landmarktheatres.com