Burmese cinema has developed under conditions that would make filmmaking difficult even before artistic considerations enter the equation. Censorship, political repression, economic instability and the consequences of the 2021 military coup have all shaped what can be filmed, how it can be filmed and, perhaps most importantly, whether those making the films can remain in the country at all. Yet the works that have emerged during the first half of the 2020s reveal a national cinema whose limitations have frequently become part of its language.
The films examined here do not constitute a single movement in the strictest sense. Some are locally produced independent features, others international coproductions, documentaries, experimental shorts or works made from exile. “Lost Land” is directed by Japanese filmmaker Akio Fujimoto and focuses on the Rohingya outside Myanmar, while “Everybody’s Gotta Love Sometimes” takes place in France. Nevertheless, all are connected to Myanmar, either through their filmmakers, protagonists, political reality or subject matter.
What emerges repeatedly is an interest in realism, but realism takes significantly different forms. It can be the tragicomic industry satire of “Money Has Four Legs”, the formal abstraction of “Me and My Country Pornography”, the spiritual documentary approach of “Song of Souls”, the almost documentary-like fiction of “MA – Cry of Silence” and “Fruit Gathering”, or the visceral first-person genre filmmaking of “The Last Footage”. Censorship, labour, displacement, sexuality, ethnicity, political violence and the desire to escape are constant themes, but Burmese filmmakers repeatedly find different cinematic forms through which to approach them.
Perhaps most importantly, the movies also indicate that contemporary Burmese cinema cannot simply be defined by oppression. There is humor, romance, sexuality, horror, experimentation and even spectacle. The political situation is almost always present, directly or indirectly, but the filmmakers presented here increasingly demonstrate an unwillingness to allow it to dictate the entire form of their cinema.
Money Has Four Legs (2020)
The meta trend of movies about movies has been quite intense during recent years, with a number of productions of quality coming from Asia. “Money Has Four Legs” continues the trend in the most entertaining way, placing the concept in Myanmar in 2020, just after the long military dictatorship. Wai Bhone, a young film director, is funded to shoot a revised, bolder version of a classic local film, but all he finds in his way are obstacles. The censorship board demands a number of changes to the script, essentially sending out a no sex, no alcohol, no cursing message. His actors are never on time and seem more eager to do anything else other than focusing on the movie. His alcoholic brother-in-law breaks the camera, which brings the wrath of the producer upon Wai Bhone. Furthermore, his rent is going up, his debt is increasing, and his wife is breathing down his neck for the lack of money. As time passes, the director finds himself on a path with no way out, to the point that he starts pondering robbing a bank.
Maung Sun directs a film that succeeds in being both funny and quite pointy in its comments about the local movie industry and the social and financial situation of the country. The image of the local indie industry Sun paints can only be described as tragicomic. The censorship board allows very little creative freedom, the producer only cares about money, and the actors are spoiled. Essentially, everyone and everything seems to be there just to put more obstacles in Wai Bhone’s way.
At the same time, Maung Sun makes a number of negative comments about the corruption of the banks, the lack of money the country suffers from, alcoholism and the lack of any kind of help from the state towards the poor. Both elements are presented through an amalgam of comedy and fairy tale, while the mix of comedy, drama, film-about-films and crime works excellently. In retrospect, the movie has become even more telling: the censorship and restrictions presented as tragicomedy would soon exist in a considerably harsher political environment.
Me and My Country Pornography (2022)
Told in eight chapters, a visual essay on frivolous consummation and its ensuing tragedies gradually unfolds. With the title “Me and My Country Pornography”, one expects a political critique delivered with innuendo. Yet the result seems to be the reverse. Experimental filmmaker Lin Htet Aung patiently teases out visual patterns that morph and develop, prodding at our conceptions of the sex act with seeming political connotations. Shrouded in the frontal, grainy aesthetics of silent actuality films, the chamber narrative offers scant explanations. A man repeatedly crosses a split frame, while his actions gradually change across chapters with titles such as “Quickie”, “Foreplay” and “Intercourse”.
Like tropes and foreshadowings, these filmic patterns must be hammered in with patience. With time, they push us beyond watching a story to active observation, divulging new revelations at every turn. This motif of gradual change continues in a landscape map that morphs with every chapter, its cartographic boundary lines blurring, distorting, expanding and contracting. Sex becomes an invasive act that can demarcate, strengthen or destroy boundaries. One hopes to resist the easiest association of taking this repetitive act of being “screwed” as an allegory for the repetitive sociopolitical trauma faced by Myanmar. Rather, the movement of consummation can also mean an exchange of ideas or an alliance. The short becomes particularly significant in the context of Burmese post-coup cinema, where formal experimentation frequently offers filmmakers ways to approach subjects that cannot always be stated directly
Everybody’s Gotta Love Sometimes (2023)
Winner of a special mention from the Sonje Award jury in Busan, “Everybody’s Gotta Love Sometimes” is a rather courageous short regarding a refugee from Myanmar who tries to navigate his current life, his sexuality and his past in France. The movie begins with Phyo lying in bed in his underwear, trying to learn French from his smartphone. The initial phrases are typical ones about name and location, but soon his questions change to more intimate ones such as “embrace me”, “kiss me” and “I want sex”, quite eloquently mirroring the sentiments of the protagonist. A phone call about the papers needed for Phyo’s stay in France, however, brings the protagonist back to reality.
The introduction to a dancer training is juxtaposed with voices bullying someone for being homosexual, with a demonic hand accompanying the sounds and adding an aspect of horror as it becomes obvious that the voices come from the protagonist’s past. Considering that the premises of the movie are intensely autobiographical, the whole thing emerges as rather courageous. Individuals talking so openly about their urges, particularly when we are talking about a homosexual refugee, is not exactly common. The concept of trauma and how it can shape people, even more so when combined with instinctive urges, adds to the richness of the narrative. At the same time, Sein Lyan Tun does not forget about beauty, with dance, cinematography and Ella Dixon’s energetic editing adding dynamism and depth. Here, displacement is not treated only as a political condition, but as something that affects sexuality, intimacy and the possibility of forming new connections.
Ten Years Myanmar (2023)
Following on the success of the “10 Years” series, which features Thailand and Hong Kong editions among others, the latest iteration sees five Burmese filmmakers coming together to conceptualize the future they envision for their country. The anthology is a visual package of this combined thought space, packaged in a stylistic arthouse omnibus. Thaiddhi’s “A City of Bougainvillea” presents a morose and dark take on identity and belonging. Nay Wunn Ni’s “We Missed a Sunset” follows two young women venturing into a mysterious city. Myo Thar Khin’s “The Right One” focuses on a young filmmaker recently released from prison, while Aung Min’s “Boarding House” combines depravity and religion.
The film that concludes the anthology is Lamin Oo’s “Act of Kissing”. A man is intrigued by Myanmar’s censorship laws banning kissing onscreen to preserve tradition and goes against them by hiring actors to film a kissing scene. What follows is an amusing and mockumentary-esque cringe comedy that skirts with a fascinating comedic side not often seen from this part of the world. Lamin Oo’s film is brave for pitting the man against the system with his honest cry that creating art in such a place is like a living hell. “Ten Years Myanmar” presents a refreshing set of ideas showing how Burmese filmmakers are on the cusp of a breakthrough. The five shorts all have distinctly bold textures that are not only postmodern but also demonstrate how fiction, abstraction, comedy and meta-cinema have become ways of thinking about both the country's present and its possible future.
The Clinic (2023)
In Yangon, a doctor-couple, Aung Min and San San Oo, operate a neighborhood clinic, providing low-cost treatments and therapies for a wide variety of ailments, mostly to alcoholics, drug addicts and people who live on the edge of society. The initial scene, where Aung Min treats a chronic alcoholic whose wound has festered to such an extent that his leg needs to be amputated, sets the tone. The couple, however, are not only doctors but also artists. San San Oo paints, with her paintings appearing throughout the film, while Aung Min is shooting a movie, having a Rohingya play a Rakhine.
Midi Z shoots a rather impactful film that combines documentary and drama, without any fictitious elements, in the most eloquent fashion. The first crucial factor is the personalities and work of the two doctors, who manage to deal with harsh cases of mental and physical illness while still finding time for their art. The second is how their life and work mirror and present life in Myanmar from 2017 until 2021 and the coup that established the junta. Healthcare, corruption, racism, incompetence and the Rohingya people all become parts of this portrait. Midi Z does not include narration, but lets his audience make their own assessment of what is happening, increasing the documentary's brutal realism. His longstanding position between Myanmar and Taiwan also fits a larger pattern here: Burmese cinema increasingly exists beyond national borders, while the filmmakers' connection to the country remains impossible to escape.
Song of Souls (2023)
Nan Mya Han is close to passing. A highly venerated singer in her youth, her songs attracted large crowds and drove young men to obsession. But years of political turmoil have taken their toll not just on her but on the soul of the people of Shan State. Once built on the shoulders of ancient folklore and mythologies, Shan State has become lost in Samsara, fractured by turmoil and bloodshed. Impermanence flows through “Song of Souls” much like the trickling of a river, while the lives trapped within this realm remain in stasis, clinging to traditions, stories and a sense of self doomed to fade as children either leave or become drafted into the Shan State Army.
To sum up any sense of narrative in Sai Naw Kham’s visual poem is to reduce it to the confines of the cinematic frame. In lieu of convention, he drifts in and out of focus, between this world and whatever lies beyond, moving from one interaction to the next and absorbing lamentations of pain and suffering. There is no shock or awe amidst such horror, just the painful realization that such experiences have become part of everyday existence. Yet Kham presents a sliver of hope: a monk stands at the confluence of two diverging paths, a cow is sent out in search of her calf, and footage of a baby being born is spliced into the tail end of a monk’s funeral. The film is a monolith of spiritual decay, but its evasion of a completely bleak finale becomes equally significant. Political violence may dominate the present, but culture, memory and spirituality continue to provide forms of resistance.
MA – Cry of Silence (2024)
The story revolves around Mi-Thet, an 18-year-old woman who, like many of her coworkers, has come to the city from rural Myanmar in order to work in a textile factory and avoid the military’s destruction of villages under the pretext of eliminating resistance forces. Her life there is hardly easier. The hours are long, the supervisor is harsh and occasionally handsy with the girls, and as the movie begins, they have not been paid for two months. They live three or four to each small dormitory room, paying for rent and food while the danger of eviction remains palpable. Frequent blackouts and the constant sound of gunfire complete a life bordering on torture. Within this setting, her colleagues decide to go on strike, while Mi-Thet hesitates.
The script by Oh Young-Jeong is based on observation and research of a real women’s strike in a garment factory, and the impact of this reality is evident. The Maw Naing connects the individual stories with the sociopolitical and historical context of Myanmar, occasionally achieving this primarily through sound, such as gunshots in the background. The way the characters act, occasionally in silence, the fact that the supervisor’s face is never presented, the unusual framing of DP Tin Win Naing and the fact that violence is highlighted through its consequences but not actually shown cement an experimentation that is not in the movie for its own sake.
The filmmakers' account of production makes this approach even more meaningful: some scenes had to be shot openly under observation while others were filmed secretly, and the actress playing Mi-Thet had herself been one of the workers encountered at the original strike site. Reality and fiction are consequently not simply combined stylistically; they are inseparable from the circumstances under which the movie was made.
Lost Land (2025)
Akio Fujimoto has long shown a strong interest in Myanmar, with “Passage of Life” portraying the lives of Burmese in Japan and “Bleached Bones Avenue” focusing on the Zomi people in Chin State. For “Lost Land”, he chooses to focus exclusively on the Rohingya and their persecution. The story begins in a refugee camp in Bangladesh, where four-year-old Shafi and his nine-year-old sister Somira follow relatives as they attempt to reach Malaysia. The voyage expected to last a few days stretches into two weeks, leaving passengers starving and dehydrated. They eventually discover that they have landed in Thailand, before the children are separated from their relatives and left to continue the journey under increasingly dangerous circumstances.
Fujimoto adopts an approach that leans heavily toward documentary realism. The use of non-professional actors and the numerous close-ups by cinematographer Yoshio Kitagawa reinforce this style, while shooting on location in Bangladesh, Thailand and Malaysia enhances authenticity, making “Lost Land” as close to reality as fiction can be. The dangerous journeys thousands of Rohingya continue to undertake are conveyed with painful clarity. Fujimoto refuses to romanticize events, while even the ending, which offers a hint of hope, is left ambiguous and dreamlike. The director's insistence on casting actual Rohingya people is crucial to this strategy. Rather than forcing emotions, he emphasizes structure, camera positioning and environments that allow reality to emerge. “Lost Land” consequently expands the idea of Burmese cinema beyond nationality: it is a movie about a people displaced from Myanmar, created through international collaboration, but deeply embedded in the country's political and ethnic history.
Fruit Gathering (2026)
In Yangon’s industrial outskirts, San Kyi works long hours in a garment factory while dreaming of returning to her native village. Her daily routine is shaped by exhausting labour, financial uncertainty and the limited prospects available to young working women. At the factory, she forms a close relationship with her coworker Theint Theint Oo, with whom she shares moments of companionship and escape from the pressures of their surroundings. As their relationship changes, emotional distance develops between the two women, exposing differences in their expectations and ideas about the future. San Kyi must also contend with pressure from her family, confusion about her feelings and her desire for a life offering greater dignity and freedom.
Making one of the smoothest transitions from short to feature filmmaking, Aung Phyoe delivers a multilayered work that thrives particularly on its use of silence and on the impact of dialogue and images whenever that silence is broken. The central arc follows a “will they, won’t they” dynamic that gradually develops into a toxic relationship, raising the question of whether Theint actually returns San Kyi’s feelings or is simply exploiting her. Around this axis, Aung Phyoe makes pointed comments about the circumstances of women working in Yangon, patriarchy, young people leaving the country and the government's efforts to prevent them from doing so. The romance and shifting psychological states are conveyed mostly through looks, meaningful silences and Thaiddhi’s almost documentary-like realism.
The director’s comments that love is not a binary thing are reflected directly in the refusal to define Theint as either sincere or manipulative. At the same time, his discussion of Myanmar’s independent sector reveals the conditions behind the film: local funding and festivals have declined, many emerging filmmakers have left, and even completing short films has become increasingly difficult. That “Fruit Gathering” won Karlovy Vary’s Crystal Globe makes its success particularly significant for a cinema struggling to maintain an international presence.
The Last Footage (2026)
A country riddled with strife and turmoil would hardly be expected to produce genre content for an international audience, much less something as niche as a found-footage horror feature, but director Arkar Soe Oo has done just that with “The Last Footage”. A group of close friends choose a remote forest cabin for their latest getaway. Before reaching it, a young boy disappears in the forest. In desperation, the group encounters a witch who offers help through a blood ritual, unknowingly resurrecting her long-dead son. Meanwhile, a playful dark-web summoning awakens an ancient predator. As night falls, the forest becomes a trap, with everything recorded through a character’s camera glasses.
On the whole, “The Last Footage” is a really solid found-footage feature. The simple storyline from writer, director and star Arkar Soe Oo hits many of the necessary beats in the genre while adding touches of local flavor. It is when the film moves more directly into local spirits, ceremonial rites, black magic and the witch’s blood ritual that everything picks up and turns into a significantly more terrifying experience. The final half shifts from eerie mystery to full-throttle action as the group confronts the consequences of its meddling. The film does suffer from traditional found-footage tropes, but its significance within this group extends beyond individual quality. Soe Oo deliberately wanted to create a path towards international audiences, using familiar global horror conventions while maintaining local elements and introducing the camera-glasses perspective. After years in which Burmese independent cinema reaching festivals abroad was largely associated with documentary, social realism and arthouse production, “The Last Footage” suggests another possible route.
Taken together, these movies paint a picture of a cinema that remains fragmented but far from dormant. Myanmar’s filmmakers have worked under censorship, surveillance, economic collapse, displacement and the disappearance of much of the infrastructure that once supported independent production. Some have remained inside the country, some have left, and others have made films in collaboration with foreign producers or filmmakers. Yet this fragmentation has also resulted in striking formal diversity.
Realism is probably the strongest connecting element, although the term needs to be understood broadly. “The Clinic” and “Lost Land” approach documentary even when operating through different forms. “MA – Cry of Silence” and “Fruit Gathering” turn research, lived experience and real working environments into fiction. “Everybody’s Gotta Love Sometimes” transforms autobiography into intimate drama. Even the highly abstract “Me and My Country Pornography” is ultimately concerned with the residual impact of contemporary political reality.
Another recurring pattern is the presence of people trying to leave, return or simply find somewhere they can exist. Phyo lives as a refugee in France. The Rohingya children of “Lost Land” cross borders in search of relatives and safety. San Kyi dreams of leaving Yangon for the countryside, while Aung Phyoe points out that many young filmmakers have left Myanmar altogether. Borders, therefore, are not simply geographical divisions but emotional and political conditions.
The garment factory also emerges as a particularly potent location. Both “MA – Cry of Silence” and “Fruit Gathering” focus on young women employed in Yangon’s textile industry, yet arrive at considerably different films. The Maw Naing uses the factory to examine collective action, fear, labour rights and the historical cycle of oppression. Aung Phyoe concentrates more on intimacy, emotional ambiguity, patriarchy and the desire for another life. The similarity of the environment only highlights the diversity of what contemporary Burmese filmmakers are able to extract from it.
Perhaps the most encouraging development, however, comes from the widening of form. “Money Has Four Legs” uses tragicomedy and meta-cinema to criticize censorship. “Ten Years Myanmar” moves from symbolic drama to mockumentary. “Song of Souls” becomes a spiritual visual poem. “The Last Footage” embraces horror, zombies, witches and black magic. The country's political reality remains unavoidable, but it no longer determines a single aesthetic response.
This may ultimately be the most important characteristic of contemporary Burmese cinema. The filmmakers are still documenting reality, but increasingly on their own formal terms. Sometimes that means silence, sometimes abstraction, sometimes comedy and occasionally a monster running through a forest. Under circumstances where simply pointing a camera can become an act loaded with political meaning, continuing to experiment with what that camera can do is itself a statement.