Aye Chan

Director

Biography of the director

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 aware of her desire to tell stories about the lives of real people in Myanmar through documentary. Determined to learn how to do this, she enrolled at YFS in 2018, where she attended a wide range of courses including Participatory Video where she learned how to help communities to create their own short films about topics close to their hearts. She was cinematographer on fellow student Chit Moe Pio’s intimate and moving portrait of his family in rural Kayah State in 2018 and was also part of the five-person creative team behind the short documentary-influenced fiction 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. 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. The Father I Knew was also selected to screen in the Seoul International Women’s Film Festival in South Korea in 2021. Writing in 2019, Aye Chan said: ‘My impulse as a documentary filmmaker – particularly 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.‘ 

Filmography of the director

2020

13‘59‘‘