Aye Chan (13.05.1995 - 18.05.2021) was from Bilin in Myanmar’s Mon State and studied geology at Mawlamyine University. Her work as an online editor at G9 Production and as a freelance photographer made her want to tell stories about the lives of real people in Myanmar through documentary. She enrolled at YFS in 2018 and was cinematographer on fellow student Chit Moe Pio’s intimate and moving portrait of his family in rural Kayah State, Going Home. She was a member of a crew of YFS-trained ‘participatory video’ facilitators who helped a community in eastern Shan State to make two films about local issues, and was also in the five-person creative team behind the short ‘true fictions’ film The Other Side of the Tracks. She travelled to Kayah State again to film her own first documentary as a director – The Father I Knew – for which she received the top Goethe-Institut Myanmar documentary award in 2019.

Aye Chan's life was tragically cut short by her accidental death at Inle Lake on 18.05.2021. Following her death, the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) in Kyoto dedicated their 2021 edition to Aye Chan and held a special screening of her film. Writing in 2019, Aye Chan said: ‘My impulse as a documentary filmmaker in The Father I Knew is to show the situation for families that have been torn apart by civil war. I want to question this situation and to ask whether there is any chance that things will change for the better in our country in the face of escalating violence and widespread tensions across the land.‘