Wang Shin-hong is suffering from insomnia. A fortune teller advises the Mandalay businessman, whose car and bulging wallet suggest that business is going pretty well, to spend 14 days in a monastery, living life as a monk and eating an apple a day.Read More »
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Taiwan-based Burmese filmmaker Midi Z produces his best work yet with “The Road to Mandalay.” Returning to narrative features after the documentaries “Jade Miners” and “City of Jade,” Z maintains his focus on Burmese exiles with a low-key, high-impact love story about two illegal immigrants with very different ideas about making money and starting a new life in Bangkok. Very well performed by Z’s regular actress Wu Ke-xi and established Taiwanese star Kai Ko (“You Are the Apple of My Eye”), “The Road to Mandalay” is bound to travel far and wide on the fest circuit following a prestigious hat-trick of selections in Venice, Toronto, and Busan. Taiwan and Hong Kong theatrical release is set for Dec. 9.Read More »
Faced with diminishing returns on his harvest, a poor young farmer in Myanmar pawns his cow for a moped and seeks alternative income as a taxi driver.
Among his first fares is a woman who has returned home for her grandfather’s funeral and is making a new start after escaping an arranged marriage in China.
Together, they are lured into one of the few lucrative business opportunities available in the area: selling “ice poison” (crystal meth) around town…Read More »