Synopsis
Young Shan woman Mo Kham arrives in Yangon to work at Daw Ngwe's shop. She is hoping for a fresh start but the trauma of war isn't so easy to put behind her. Can she find a way to start living in the present?
Filmmaker's Biographies
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Aye Nilar Kyaw
Aye Nilar Kyaw is Karen (Kayin) and a Christian. She took up a distance learning degree in law at West Yangon University in 2012 and worked in various jobs, also volunteering for NGO Vision Trust Myanmar, before enrolling at YFS in 2016 where she worked on several films as editor, cinematographer and sound designer (Through Thick and Thin). Child of the Revolution, which received the 2017 Goethe Institut Myanmar Jade Documentary Award, was her first film as both director and cinematographer. Made with support from YFS, her 2023 film Searching for Frogs takes us to a village inhabited by the Maw Nway Bwar who are the last people in Myanmar to practice rituals around the ‘frog drum’.
Khine Minn Soe
Painter and illustrator Khine Minn Soe studied at the State School of Fine Arts. A Rakhine ethnic, he attended YFS courses in documentary, editing and screenwriting in 2016 and in 2017 joined the School’s first course in docuanimation, helping to create a film in the series End Violence Against Women! He was also a member of the five-person crew that filmed the 2019 ‘true fictions’ project The Banyan Tree.
Maung Okkar
Maung Okkar's film career began at the age of 14 when he starred in Datkhe, a feature film directed by his father – the celebrated filmmaker U Wunna. Okkar's first documentary Charcoal Boy screened to acclaim at a number of international film festivals. His second work as a director was The Game, a gritty documentary about the cut and thrust of Myanmar kickboxing, which was shown during the Art of Freedom Film Festival in Yangon in 2011. Let's Get on the Bus was his first commissioned work for an NGO. He is also the co-founder of Save Myanmar Film, an organisation dedicated to preserving Myanmar’s film heritage.
Myat Minn Khant
Mandalay-born Myat Minn Khant was a graphic designer before he joined YFS in 2016. He provided the soundtrack for the short documentaries Vegetable Stall and Through Thick and Thin and was also part of the creative team behind a trio of animated documentaries aiming to raise awareness about violence against women. He was one of the five-person crew on the short fiction The Banyan Tree and is currently developing a feature-length fiction film with a grant from the Myanmar Script Fund.
Nang Chan Myayt Aye
Nang Chan Myayt Aye (born in 1987) is Shan-Pa-O and grew up in Hopong Township in southern Shan State in Myanmar. After taking a science degree at Taunggyi Technology University, she volunteered for several civil society organisations. Since joining YFS in 2016, she has taken part in courses including in participatory video and later co-facilitated a YFS Travelling Cinema placement in Inle Lake’s Naung Shwe. She was also a co-creator of the short YFS-produced fiction The Banyan Tree about a young Shan girl’s struggle to overcome the trauma of civil war. Nang Chan Myayt Aye’s first documentary was Buy, Sell, Resell; her third documentary is The Campaigner. She is currently developing a feature-length documentary about the economic and environmental threats to the people who live along Nam Teng creek, a tributary of the Thanlwin River in Shan State.