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Shifting Sands (2021)

Shifting Sands

Migration from the countryside to the big city in Myanmar

November, 2021
20th Tiburon International Film Festival
Tiburon Golden Reel Award for Best Documentary Short
California, USA

Synopsis

Every year, thousands of young people flock to Yangon from Myanmar’s rural dry zone to work in the factories that have sprung up on the outskirts of the country’s former capital. Ma Nwet Yin Win is one of them. She and her sister left their home on an alluvial island in the Ayeyarwaddy River twenty years ago. Climate change has made life there difficult, but fighting for workers’ rights in Yangon is no less daunting.

Director's Biography

May Thyn Kyiwas born in 1996 in Yangon to parents from the Rakhine and Inn ethnic groups in western Myanmar and central Shan State respectively. Frustrated by constraints for women working in journalism, she left reporting and announcing jobs at the Eleven Media Group and Mandalay FM to instead work in communications for the Rainfall Feminist Organization. Since joining YFS in 2020, she has worked on several projects, such as fellow student Mai Aik Yunn’s A Boy with Dreams. Shifting Sands is her directing debut.

Awards & Nominations

November, 2021
20th Tiburon International Film Festival
Tiburon Golden Reel Award for Best Documentary Short
California, USA
May, 2022
Jean Rouch Film Festival
Nomination for Best International Documentary
Paris, France
March, 2022
Watersprite International Student Short Film Festival
Nomination for Best Social Impact Film
Cambridge, England
August, 2021
Bozcaada International Festival of Ecological Documentary
Nomination for GAIA Student Award
Bozcaada, Turkey

Screenings

August, 2021
Seoul International Women’s Film Festival
Seoul, South Korea
June, 2021
Ischia Film Festival
World Premiere
Ischia, Italy

Director's Filmography

2021
Shifting Sands

Director

14‘31‘‘

Pictures

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