Los Angeles Film Festival 2012

Return to Burma

Gui Lai De Ren

(Myanmar , Taiwan, 2011, 84 mins)

Producers: Midi Z, Patrick Mao Huang
Screenwriter: Midi Z
Cinematographer: Midi Z
Editors: Lin Sheng Wen, Midi Z
Cast: Wang Shin-Hong

Shot on the sly shortly after the recent elections in Myanmar, Return to Burma blends fact with fiction as Xing-Hong, a Burmese laborer of Chinese descent, returns home after a ten-year stint working in Taipei. Seeing friends and family for the first time in years, Xing-Hong doggedly quizzes everyone on their jobs and personal finances, discovering an absurdly bleak economic reality that has changed little in more than a decade. While government-sanctioned pop songs sing of a democratic Myanmar nobody recognizes yet, director Midi Z, himself a Chinese-Burmese ex-pat, looks beyond the propaganda and censorship to reveal a country with money on its mind but none in its pockets.

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