Sad Film

Young Burmese filmmaker, who goes by pseudonym ‘Vasili’, and wears a mask, for he must remain anonymous, documents daily life in Myanmar since the beginning of the military coup this past February. Under this brutal oppression, the filmmaker oscillates between a furious need for resistance and an overwhelming and paralysing fear: to protest or to hide—a repetition of the trauma inflicted upon his father who was arrested thirty years ago. What remains constant is the filmmaker’s need for creative expression, though he realises that under a dictatorship art has become impossible, and so is his dream of making films. (Venice International Film Festival)