Every year, thousands of Burmese women enter into forced marriages in China. Naing Hsu Pan uses animation to bring the moving account of one of these women to life. Using a wash drawing technique, the filmmaker paints a subtle portrait of a woman torn apart by homesickness, the oppression she has suffered and her love for her daughter.
Mildred, a girl dissatisfied with her life, meets an interesting vampire in the city of Yangon.
Kaung Myat Htun (gong mee-at tuun) is a superhero that lives in stealth. A traditionally obedient Burmese child in a family of tailors, he goes about his day exploring golden pagodas of which Myanmar is famous for, whilst gradually revealing that he is no ordinary human child.
To his mother, Agyip is a 19-year-old who works as a hotel receptionist. What she doesn’t know is that by night her son has another persona and another life – as ‘Violet Katy’. In conservative Myanmar, drag is something of a nascent art and often frowned upon, but Agyip and his friend Myint Kant Zin are determined to don their make-up and costumes, strut their stuff and live the lives they want – in spite of family pressure.
On her summer break, 18-year-old Hnin Pwint returns to her hometown where she lives with her grandmother. As the revolution against the military coup spreads to the countryside, she is caught between her desire to join the armed resistance and her connection to her family’s complex past.
Sacrificial Heart (2004) offers a rare cinematic glimpse of Burmese culture and history. Kyi Soe Tun, a five-time Myanmar academy award-winning director who has served as the chairman of the Myanmar Motion Picture Organization, draws on the eleventh century history of the Bagan Kingdom to tell a story of war and romance as the prince Kyanzittha falls in love with a Mon queen as he helps her husband defeat invaders. Their romance is depicted with falling flower petals and music, a few moments' respite amid scenes of bloodshed and clanging swordsmanship. Despairing of her love, Kyanzittha finds comfort with another love when he is sent into exile. Will he and his first love ever be allowed to be together? The film includes comic elements, showing Kyanzittha's good-humored relationship with his three loyal lieutenants, and making fun of some of the less than kingly kings of the period.
In the Sagaing Hills, 12 miles from the ancient capital of Mandalay are hundreds of pagodas, stupas, monasteries and nunneries which form a focal point of worship for Buddhism in Burma. In 1986 the filmmaker lived for 15 months as a nun in the Thameikdaw Gaung nunnery. Some years later she is coming back for a visit in order to see what has changed. This is an intimate insight into the daily life of a nunnery as well a portrait of the monastic economy and its interactions with the society.
A love triangle is made complicated when each party decides to get rid of the third person. But the complication becomes even more bizarre as they end up hiring the same killer.
