‘MA – Cry Of Silence’: Busan Review

Dir: The Maw Naing. Myanmar/Singapore/France/Norway/South Korea/Qatar. 2024. 77mins 

The political grows more and more private in MA – Cry Of Silence, The Maw Naing’s punchy, heartfelt drama which displays the day by day actuality of life in Myanmar by the ruthless exploitation of a younger textile employee. Her choice to combat again lies on the coronary heart of an eye-opening work that ought to discover a explicit welcome at festivals with a robust human rights focus following its Busan New Currents premiere.

A stirring name to arms for the folks of Myanmar 

Closing titles inform us that MA – Cry Of Silence, Naing’s first characteristic since his 2014 debut The Monk, is impressed by ladies’s strikes that came about in 2012 and by the continued battle to attain any staff’ rights in Myanmar. Set within the current day, it tells of 18 year-old Mi-Thet (Su Lay) who has left her household within the countryside for a job at a garment manufacturing facility in Yangon. There’s nothing in her life past work and the temporary durations of relaxation in between. Mi-Thet shares a room with two different ladies and tries to ship some a reimbursement to her household. Every little thing feels as if it getting worse; there are frequent energy cuts, meals shortages and rising costs to cope with and the employees haven’t been paid for the final two months. “I can’t even afford a bar of cleaning soap,” claims one among her colleagues. 

MA – Cry Of Silence depicts a life that hardly feels price residing. Cinematographer Tin Win Naing (who additionally shot The Monk) paints Mi-Thet’s boarding home as gloomy and claustrophobic; a warren of distress with no privateness. The garment manufacturing facility is all synthetic gentle and rows of stitching machines. The pictures of whirring followers and clock faces underscore the notion that these ladies are like creatures trapped on a operating wheel.

The manufacturing facility is presided over by a ruthless, predatory male supervisor. The Maw Naing retains the menace to Mi-Thet and her colleagues faceless – he’s seen in silhouette or reflection, his appearances signalled by the slap of a metal ruler that’s used to claim his authority. Equally, when a Chinese language boss arrives to conclude a cope with the textile manufacturing facility, he’s by no means proven. 

The actual travails skilled by Mi-Thet are punctuated by radio stories detailing the broader image of life below the army junta that has dominated Myanmar since 2021. The movie is threaded with cell phone footage of villages which have been diminished to smouldering embers and other people pressured from their houses. Gun pictures are often heard on the soundtrack, fires seen on the distant horizon.

When the bosses present little curiosity in paying their staff,  Nyein Nyein (Kyawt Kay Khaing) makes the decision for a strike. The preliminary numbers are small and the chants are timid, however regularly their voices develop louder. Mi-Thet finds a mentor in Ko-Tun (Nay Htoo Aung), a scholar chief in the course of the anti-government protests of 1988 whose again remains to be criss-crossed with the scars earned from his defiance all these years in the past. Sharing his reminiscences and his books, he makes Mi-Thet conscious of the occasions that retains repeating within the historical past of Myanmar.

The Maw Naing provides a poetic aspect with intensive voice-over reflections on the state of Myanmar and what the longer term could maintain, though the comparatively temporary operating time implies that some parts of the story are a bit sketchy. Because the strike builds in the direction of a surprising conclusion, what was an absorbing story of particular person progress and radicalisation is reworked right into a stirring name to arms for the folks of Myanmar.