Things can get a bit sweary when you’re a sea salt worker
Synopsis
For the residents of Thone Gwa village in Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady Delta, life depends on the sea salt they harvest by hand using centuries-old methods. Ignoring the blisters that plague their bare feet, men and women trudge swiftly between the evaporation basins, heavy baskets of salt dangling from the yokes on their shoulders. As they hurry back and forth under the blistering sun, they yell colourful words of encouragement to each other. When you’re obliged to endure such eye-watering physical hardship day in, day out to put food on the table, is it any wonder that your language sometimes gets a bit salty, too?
Director's Statement
‘Although I grew up in the Ayeyarwady Delta, I knew nothing about sea salt production, so making this film was very much a journey of discovery for me. Thone Gwa village lies deep within the Delta and is not far from the Andaman Sea; it can only be reached by boat. Sea salt is produced by drying out tidewater under the sun; an unexpected downpour can be ruinous. The work here is seasonal and the wages so meagre that whole families need to work to make a living. When I asked the villagers if I could make a film about them, they were thrilled. ‘No-one has ever come here to film us before,’ they said, ‘we are forgotten people’.
Director's Biography
Yadanar Oo was born in Yangon in 1992. A computer arts graduate from the National University of Arts and Culture, she went on to study business administration at the Yangon Institute of Economics and spent several years working in marketing. Having come to the realisation that her true passion is filmmaking, in 2022 she decided to quit her steady job and apply for a place at Yangon Film School. Since then, she has worked on several YFS productions in different capacities including sound recordist (All We Need is a Little Breath, dir. Theint Mon Soe), sound designer (Dear Daughter, dir. Hsu Pan Naing) and colourist (With Love & Devotion, dir. Nant May Flower). She made her directorial debut with In the Heat of the Fire, a portrait of a similarly intense workplace at an iron foundry. Life is Salty is her second film.
