“When Rowan was born and we began living as a family, it was like everything had finally fallen into place,” relates Rupert Isaacson in voice-over. “And then, it all fell apart.”

When Rupert’s son Rowan was 2 years old, he was diagnosed with autism. For the British journalist and Kristin Neff, his American wife, “the feeling was like being hit across the face with a baseball bat,” Rupert recalls in the uplifting new documentary photographed and directed by Michel Orion Scott.

Scott had been in pre-production on a different documentary based on Rupert’s nonfiction book about Botswana’s Kalahari Bushmen, when the devoted dad - who’d be willing to travel to the ends of the earth if it meant helping his troubled young son - suggested switching gears to do just that.

The resulting film is a beautifully shot travelogue that doesn’t dwell on the tragedy of autism, but tells the story of a family that did something crazy and journeyed from their Texas home to the picturesque plains of outer Mongolia.

Rupert had spent much of his youth on a farm training horses, a passion he avoided sharing with his son, citing safety concerns. Fate had other plans. When Rowan was 4 years old, he ran onto a neighbor’s property, straight toward his old mare, called Betsy. “She didn’t spook,” recalls Rupert. “Instead, her reaction was so gentle, so submissive,” he realized that his son “had some direct line to her.”

Watching the child calmly sit astride Betsy, it’s hard to disagree with his father’s assessment, especially after we’ve already witnessed a series of inconsolable tantrums from the socially isolated, shaggy-haired youth, some of them lasting up to four hours.

Inspired, Rupert discovers that the place where horseback riding originated also happens to be the one place on earth where shamanism - a subject he’s studied in his work - is, in fact, the state religion: Mongolia.

Funded by an advance from a tie-in book, the family travels to the former Soviet territory in search of a miracle.

“Did Rowan get cured of his autism?” asks his doting father. “No.” But, was the “horse boy” healed of some of the dysfunctions that go along with his disability? Delight to the film while drawing your own conclusion.

Not rated. At Kendall Square Cinema.