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Cobalt Blue

Aung Phyoe
Myanmar
2019 | 00:27:00

Yangon, 1998. The film takes place on one evening at the government housing apartment by the railroad where a boy and his mother waiting for the return of the father, a civil servant, to move out another town at Upper Burma. The boy realises the unusual bond between him and his mother regards the young helpful man-next-door.

Between

Than Lwin Oo
Myanmar
2019 | 0:07:37

A back street. A boy and a girl. A life.

Opium Farmers

Su Su Hlaing
Myanmar
2019 | 00:20:56

Myanmar is the second largest opium producer in the world after Afghanistan. Opium cultivation is often the only viable cash crop for poor farmers living in remote mountain areas in Kachin and Shan States. Indigenous people in Kachin and Shan also use opium culturally, in religious rituals and as traditional medicine. The Myanmar government is carrying out forced eradication to reduce opium production without sufficiently considering the farmers themselves. The Myanmar Opium Farmers’ Forum (MOFF) was formed in 2013 to protect the rights of farmers and help them have meaningful involvement in drug policy design and alternative livelihood development. This film sensitively portrays the lives of two opium farming families in Myanmar and sheds light on their plight.

Lost Boy

Chit Moe Pio
Myanmar
2019 | 00:14:40

Thant Zin came to Yangon with his brother around three years ago. He may have been twelve years old at the time, but he can’t really remember. After finding him a job at a car wash, his brother returned to their village, leaving Thant Zin behind. He has not been back since. Deeply unhappy in his badly paid job, and fed up with sleeping under a torn mosquito net in a dark and dingy room, Thant longs to go home – but he doesn’t remember where his village is, or even what it is called. A sensitively filmed short documentary about how one boy tries to cope with loneliness and abandonment – a fate shared by many children and young adults migrating from rural Myanmar to the city in search of work and a better life.

Going Home

Shin Thandar
Myanmar
2019 | 00:18:05

A young filmmaker pays a visit to his native village in Myanmar’s Kayah State where he reconnects with his hill-farming family and a way of life marked by privation but rich in tradition that has remained unchanged for centuries. His presence rekindles old arguments between his siblings and his mother, reminding him all too keenly of the sacrifices each of them has made so that he might have an education.

No Country for Women

Seng Mai
Myanmar
2019 | 00:10:00

Hundreds of thousands of Myanmar youths go off to the jade mines in Hpakant, Kachin State, to escape from the clutches of poverty. These youths eventually become addicted to drugs during their time there. There are also women among these durg addcis. The community-based anti-drug organization has opened up rehabilitation centers for these youths addicted to drugs. Only a few of these centers accept women. Women do not have the opportunity to join the rehabilitation centers. This documentary presents the need for rehabilitation centers that accommodate drug-addicted women in the Kachin State, Just like their male counterparts.