My Mandalay

Of time and Myanmar’s legendary city

Synopsis

The filmmaker looks back fondly on her childhood memories of Myanmar’s second largest city and contemplates how this legendary place is beginning to change as a result of the country’s rapid transition.

Director's Biography

Born of a Burmese publisher father and a Shan mother in 1991, English graduate Shunn Lei Swe Yee has been active in a number of youth and development networks. A passionate feminist, she claims that one of the reasons she joined Yangon Film School was to learn how to make films that will give a stronger voice to women in Myanmar. Her first film as a director was the evocative My Grandfather’s House in which a woman recalls her childhood in the traditional teak house where she grew up; her second-year project was an essayistic piece about her own childhood memories, My Mandalay. Having trained in participatory video at YFS in 2014, she has regularly joined YFS Travelling Cinema crews facilitating workshops in communities in Kachin and Chin. The School Uniform marked her debut as a director of fiction.

Screenings

May, 2017
Innsbruck International Film Festival
Innsbruck, Austria

Director's Filmography

2013

13‘45‘‘

2016
My Mandalay

Director

8‘46‘‘

2017

17‘17‘‘

Pictures