SINGAPORE PREMIERE
Director: Lamin Oo
Runtime: 68 minutes
Country: Myanmar
Language: Burmese
Rating: R21 (Homosexual Theme)

Full Synopsis

In this intimate and poignant debut documentary feature, a queer couple from a remote village in Rakhine state on the Western coastline of Myanmar, negotiates the complexities of belonging.

Gwa To is a charming and quick-witted transgender man who has never had a lasting relationship, while Ma Soe, is a soft-spoken straight talker who swore off marriage having grown up with an alcoholic father. At a village festival, Gwa To watches Ma Soe perform a song and falls in love with her. Ma Soe slowly warms up to him and they start living together. However, when Gwa To brings home a one-month old, Phoe Too, who is up for adoption, the strength of their relationship is tested.

ဆင်းရဲနွမ်းပါးတဲ့ ရခိုင်တောင်ပိုင်းက ရွာလေးတစ်ရွာမှာ လိင်တူချစ်သူစုံတွဲတစ်တွဲနဲ့ သူတို့ရဲ့ မွေးစားသားလေးတို့ အခက်အခဲမျိုးစုံကို ကျော်ဖြတ်ပြီး နွေးထွေးတဲ့ မိသားစုတစ်စုကို တည်ဆောက်ထားကြတယ်။

Myanmar Short Film Focus (curated by Moe Myat May Zarchi)

Conceived by filmmaker-curator Moe Myat May Zarchi, the Myanmar focus of the RADICAL WHISPERS programme holds up a mirror to the current landscape of the country. Consisting of 7 short films and 1 feature film, the programme platforms emerging independent filmmakers who cover issues such as diaspora, political struggles and gendered social expectations. A travelogue based on letters exchanged between two friends during the military coup (February 1st), an experimental audiovisual collage inspired by Taoist philosophy (Freedom of Clouds), a feature documentary of a queer family from rural Rakhine (3 Strangers) and a poetic confessional meditating on freedom (A Letter to a Bird). As soft and intimate as these voices are, the tapestry of hidden emotions makes a strong statement on the importance of freedom, love and resilience in a country where self-expression is constantly under scrutiny.

ဖလင်မက်ကာ ကျူရေတာ မိုးမြတ်မေဇာခြည် ရွေးချယ်ထားတဲ့ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံကိုမီးမောင်းထိုးတဲ့ Radical Whispers ဆိုတဲ့ ပရိုဂရမ်က ဇာတ်လမ်းတို ၇ ခုနဲ့ မှတ်တမ်းဇာတ်လမ်းရှည်လက်ရာ ၁ ခုပါဝင်ပါတယ်။ လိင်ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာ ခွဲခြားမှုတွေ နိုင်ငံရေးအရှုပ်အထွေးကြောင့်ဖြစ်ပေါ်လာတဲ့ အကျိုးအဆက်တွေ နဲ့ အခြားသော မှီးမှောင်ထိုးပြမခံရတဲ့ သဘောတရားနဲ့ ဇတ်လမ်းတွေကိုရွေးချယ်တင်ဆက်ထားပါတယ်။  ဘယ်လောက်ပဲ ကျယ်လောင်တဲ့အသံဖြစ်စေ ဘယ်လောက်ပဲ နီးကပ်ပြီးတိုးတိတ်တဲ့အသံဖြစ်စေ ဒီအသံတွေအားလုံးစုပေါင်းရောယှက်လိုက်ရင် self-expression ကိုအမြဲတမ်းစောင့်ကြည့်ခံနေရတဲ့ နိုင်ငံတခုရဲ့ ပိတ်လှောင်ထားတဲ့ခံစားမှု၊ လွတ်လပ်မှုနဲ့ အချစ်မေတ္တာကိုရှာဖွေခြင်းတို့ကို ဒီဇာတ်လမ်းတွေမှတဆင့်တွေ့မြင်ခံစားရပါမယ်။

About Moe Myat May Zarchi

Moe Myat May Zarchi is a filmmaker, cultural practitioner, and an audiovisual artist born and raised in Myanmar. She graduated from New York Film Academy and founded 3-ACT, a film organisation that publishes a cinema magazine and organises workshops and festivals. She also co-founded MATTER audiovisual lab, the first interdisciplinary and experimental arts collective in Myanmar. Her films have won awards at Singapore International Film Festival, Vesoul International Film Festival and others. A finalist of Julius Baer Next Generation Art Prize in Moving Images, she is interested in exploring the metaphysical and personal aspects of storytelling through an innovative use of visuals and sound.

For the full Radical Whispers: Asian Documentaries and Shorts programme, please click here.

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