For young women, life in contemporary Myanmar can feel quite oppressive. Especially if they work at a textile factory in the industrial Yangon, the country’s largest city. Just like San Kyi and Theint Theint Oo do. They are the protagonists of Fruit Gathering (Thit-thee Khu), Aung Phyoe’s much-anticipated feature directorial debut, which world premieres in the Crystal Globe main competition program of the 60th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) on Thursday.
It marks the first time that the fest in the Czech spa town has programmed a movie from Myanmar.
The two young women at the center of the chamber piece that is Fruit Gathering face more challenges than hard work in a monotonous environment, including exhausting work, economic uncertainty and social repression. After all, there are also private lives, needs and desires that don’t get enough time and attention.
“Although the grueling pace of everyday life stifles opportunities for human connection, both women continue to dream of intimacy and escape,” the press notes highlight. “When they grow closer, they set in motion the previously silenced fibers of their own emotions.”
The film weaves tenderness, harshness, silence, and unspoken hopes into a cinematic tapestry that “explores how women’s desires survive in a country where intimacy and love between women remain socially unacceptable,” the KVIFF website notes.
The cast of Fruit Gathering features Nandar Myat Aung, Nandar Myint Lwin, Thida Soe Khant, Tin Tin Ei and Min Nyo. Thaiddhi handled the cinematography for the movie, which was edited by Emily Swe.
The film shares its title with a poetry collection by Rabindranath Tagore, whose Burmese translation the filmmaker read. The title reminded him of fruit being gathered before the monsoon season. “I later became aware of the metaphors of desire,” he shares in the press notes for the film. “I merged the physical act of the fruit gathering season with the character’s desire to return to her native home with someone she wants to keep in her life.”
If you have never seen a film from Myanmar or are curious about what to expect from Fruit Gathering, THR can today exclusively premiere the trailer for the film. Are you ready for a first glimpse of women’s lives inside and outside a textile factory in Myanmar, while they long for love? Meet the two young protagonists and their surroundings in the exclusive trailer for Fruit Gathering right here.
