Synopsis
Min Min quits working for his bossy aunt and falls in with a drug dealer. He enjoys the freedom of his new job and the cash certainly comes in handy. But ultimately he discovers there's no such thing as easy money.
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Credits
A film by:
Eim Chan Thar
Ja Roi Aung
Min Yan Thaik
Mann Pye Phyo Aung
Nang Mhwe Ngin Seng
Editors: Thae Zar Chi Khaing, Zin Mar Oo,
Khin Warso
Editing Mentor: Regina Bärtschi
Categories
Technical Details
Duration: 13‘10‘‘
16:9 Anamorphic
DVD PAL
English Subtitles
2020
Filmmaker's Biographies
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Eim Chan Thar
Eim Chan Thar (born in 1983) is of Karen ethnicity and comes from Myaungmya township in Ayeyarwady Region. Despite her parents’ misgivings, she spent four years working in a bank to save enough money to dedicate herself to film. In 2016 she joined Yangon Film School and directed her first documentary, Tofu Nights. Other YFS courses followed, giving rise to Don’t Blame Me!, a powerful animated documentary about a survivor of sexual violence that quickly went viral following its release on social media, and a collaborative fictional work, Easy Money. She attended the Myanmar Motion Picture Organization’s film directing course in 2018, creating Lon. A year later she studied cinematography at the National University of Arts and Culture and wrote a script, ‘My Precious Breakfast’. Eim Chan Thar is also a photographer and a painter. Her exhibited works include ‘The Novice’, and the paintings ‘Mother’ and ‘Hibiscus’. Bone Whisperers is her second documentary.
Ja Roi Aung
Ja Roi Aung was born in Myitkyina township in Kachin State. She spent her teenage years volunteering in her community and, after completing a social studies and leadership diploma at Kant Kaw Education Center, continued teaching at Naushawng Community School and the National YWCA of Myanmar prior to joining YFS in 2018. She has since worked on a string of YFS films in various capacities from sound recordist to sound designer and/or colourist (Burmese Rapper, Lost Boy, The Father I Knew) and was a member of the five-person crew on the short ‘true fictions’ film Easy Money. She has also joined participatory video facilitator teams in Sittwe in Rakhine, Bagan in central Myanmar and Mawlamyine in Mon State, helping local communities to make their own films about topics of importance to them such as pollution, desertification, street children and early marriage.
Min Yan Thaik
Min Yan Thaik was born in Yay Township and is an ethnic Mon. Following computer science studies in Mawlamyine, he spent several years working for various humanitarian and cultural charities in Mon State before becoming a web developer for the Mon Educational Committee. He joined YFS in 2014 and has taken courses including in documentary, participatory video and fiction filmmaking. He was awarded a YFS grant in 2016 to develop his graduation film Reflections, about a family of rafters working on the waterways of Ye Chaung Phyar region in Mon state. In 2016, he was a participatory video facilitator during a Travelling Cinema placement in Myitkyina in Kachin State where he helped a local community to make two films: A Tea Planter’s Struggles and Dirty Water.
Mann Pye Phyo Aung
Mann Pye Phyo Aung (born 1993) is from Lashio, the capital of northern Shan State in Myanmar. A photographer, he volunteered at a number of civil society organisations in Myanmar before joining YFS in 2018. During his studies at YFS he worked as editor and/or sound recordist on a number of his peers' documentary projects, including 30th Street Mosque and Husband and Wife. He was also co-creator of a short drama shot in Yangon with a non-professional cast, Easy Money. In 2020 his script Curve received a Special Mention from the Myanmar Script Fund, and he is also the recipient of a photography scholarship from Myanmar Deitta's Contemporary Documentary Photography Practice (CDPP) programme. Lashio Ambulance, his second-year project at YFS, earned him the Jade Award in the Goethe-Institute Myanmar's Documentary Competition. His newest film Light Matter will celebrate its World Premiere at the upcoming Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival in May 2024.
Nang Mhwe Ngin Seng
Nang Mhwe Ngin Seng was born in Taunggyi, Shan State in 1997 and raised in the small town of Mong Nai in southern Shan State. Having studied civil engineering and English, she took up various jobs ranging from site engineer, to sales assistant and youth volunteer before deciding to fulfil her dream to learn filmmaking by joining YFS in 2018. She has since completed a number of YFS courses including Docu-Animation where she helped create a short black-and-white animated film, More Than Skin Deep, based on an oral history published in the book ‘Of Peaceful Days’. After making her documentary debut with Husband & Wife, which was filmed in the Shan capital of Taunggyi, she returned to rural Mong Nai to make her second documentary, Not Like My Father.
