Myanmar

Taiwan Premiere

Ever since fleeing Myanmar as a child, Mu, a young Kayan woman, lives confined as a refugee and tourist attraction in Thailand. Soon after she becomes a single teenage mother, the U.N. initiates a resettlement plan for the refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border which creates an opportunity for potentially tens of thousands of people to start new lives in the USA.

Determined to pursue freedom for herself and her baby, Mu ruptures ties with her traditional mother, her culture and tribe to fulfill the requirements of the rigorous vetting process. Once she finally arrives in America, her romanticized ideas are challenged by the reality that unfolds. As Mu fights to adapt, she begins to wonder where her world truly lies.

Hunter-gatherer, artist, philosopher, teacher, one-man-band and loving husband and father, the versatile and irrepressible Han Shwe is something of a Burmese ‘Renaissance man’. This uplifting documentary follows him as he works tirelessly to scrape together a living for his wife and his children and incredibly still finds time to promote democracy in his rural locality in transitional Myanmar.

Poetry is immensely popular in Burma/Myanmar, a country emerging from years of dictatorship and isolation. In the past, poetry was a way to endure and resist tyranny. Today, there are more online poets than bloggers. The stories and poems in Burma Storybook circle around Maung Aung Pwint, the country’s most famous dissident poet alive today, as he waits for his long-lost son to return home from exile. His family symbolizes resistance and grace, an answer to the poet’s question: “how can our hearts possibly be healed?”

Sailing A Sinking Sea explores the culture of the Moken people of Myanmar and Thailand. The Moken are a nomadic seafaring community and one of the smallest ethnic groups in Asia. Spending eight months out of the year in thatch-roofed wooden boats, they are wholly reliant upon the sea, and their entire belief system revolves around water. Filmed on boats, underwater, and on 13 different islands, this film weaves a visual and aural tapestry of Moken mythologies and present-day practices.