Synopsis
A young Muslim woman describes how discrimination has had a deep effect on her, but also how her close friendship with a Buddhist girl – in which they discuss their differences and similarities without recriminations – has saved her from anger and bitterness.
Filmmaker's Biographies 1 | 5
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.
Aung Nwai Htway
Aung Nwai Htway is from Yangon. He began his career working for the NGO Population Services International (PSI) as an editor. Having joined Yangon Film School in 2006, in 2007 he tried his hand at directing for the first time with the short documentary A Piece of Eden, about a young boy suffering from muscular dystrophy. Developed with YFS, his 2012 documentary Behind the Screen is his most personal film and tells the painful story of his parents’ divorce, both of whom were Burmese film stars in the 1960s and 70s. This moving work won awards at Yangon’s Wathann Filmfest and at Salaya International Documentary Film Festival in Thailand; it also screened to acclaim at the prestigious International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam.
Aye Nilar Kyaw
Aye Nilar Kyaw is Karen (Kayin) and a Christian. She took up a distance learning degree in law at West Yangon University in 2012 and worked in various jobs, also volunteering for NGO Vision Trust Myanmar, before enrolling at YFS in 2016 where she worked on several films as editor, cinematographer and sound designer (Through Thick and Thin). Child of the Revolution, which received the 2017 Goethe Institut Myanmar Jade Documentary Award, was her first film as both director and cinematographer. Made with support from YFS, her 2023 film Searching for Frogs takes us to a village inhabited by the Maw Nway Bwar who are the last people in Myanmar to practice rituals around the ‘frog drum’.
Nyein Chan Myo
Born in Yangon in 1996, Nyein Chan Myo studied journalism and worked at Joosk Animation Studio as an illustrator and animator before joining a YFS course in animated documentary in 2018. He was a member of the team that created Beyond the Hatred, in which a Buddhist woman recalls how she turned her back on a wave of anti-Muslim feeling in her native Lashio to help a Muslim friend. Nyein Chan has since worked on a number of commissioned animation projects for the School’s production arm, Yangon Film Services.
Saw Eh Doh Poe
Saw Eh Doh Poe is Karen and grew up in Yangon. Born in 1991 into a Christian pastor’s family, he attended a BARS liberal arts course at the Myanmar Insitute of Theology and then studied IT before turning his attentions to anime and graphic design. In 2014, in between stints as a graphic artist and fixer/producer at Eleven Media and BBC Media Action respectively, he enrolled at Yangon Film School where he attended the School’s flagship documentary course among others. He found his true calling in the School’s first docuanimation class in 2017 from which a trio of short films entitled End Violence Against Women! emerged. These films scored almost 1m views on social media and were also broadcast on national television and radio. His animation skills continued to grow in subsequent courses in 2018 during which he was a key creative on the award-winning sand animation Limbo (Grand Prix at WHO’s Health for All film festival in 2020), and the papier-mâché stop-motion film Our Town. He also worked on a series of animations on land rights and acceptance of difference produced by the School’s production arm Yangon Film Services.
