Myanmar Diaries – DocPoint – Helsinki documentary film festival

Premiering at the 2022 Berlinale just over a year after the military coup and crackdown that ended Myanmar’s highly tentative march towards democracy, this film’s most admirable quality is its very existence. The collective work of ten Burmese filmmakers who have chosen not to reveal their identities for obvious reasons, it is a defiant act of creative resistance, showing that cinema can be made even in the most difficult and dangerous of circumstances.

Lee Marshall, Screen Daily

This is powerful stuff, not only politically, but artistically, too: despite the lo-fi aspect of all of the segments, they are connected in an admirably consistent way and have a well-built chronology and dynamics that keep the viewer not only engaged, but genuinely moved, at times also flabbergasted. The narrative simplicity of some of the fiction pieces only makes them more potent, and the documentary parts, most often reproductions of Facebook Live streams made in an attempt to get the story out there, possess a raw energy of despair, anger and protest.

If the news won’t show Myanmar, cinema will, and it has the power to transcend numbers and pure story to create empathy and awaken humanness in audiences numbed by the mainstream and social media.

Vladan Petkovic, Cineuropa

Language: Burmese
Subtitles: English
Length: 70 min
Age Limit: K16
Year: 2022
Production Country: Netherlands, Myanmar, Norway

Director: The Myanmar Film Collective
Producer: The Myanmar Film Collective
Production Company: The Myanmar Film Collective
Distribution Company: Autlook Filmsales
Screenplay: The Myanmar Film Collective
Editing: The Myanmar Film Collective
Cinematographer: The Myanmar Film Collective
Music: The Myanmar Film Collective
Sound Design: The Myanmar Film Collective