Ma – Cry of Silence (Drama)
Director: The Maw Naing
Producer: Young Jeong Oh,The Maw Naing
Cinematographer: Tin Win Naing
Editor: Nicolas Bancilhon
Textile factory workers on strike reflect a greater political resistance in this stirring cri de coeur set amid the military occupation of Myanmar.
After her parents go missing in Myanmar’s 2021 military coup, 18-year-old Mi-Thet is forced to take responsibility for her younger siblings. Accepting a live-in job in a Yangon factory, she’s thrown into the Dickensian conditions of the local garment industry, living and working in indentured employment under threats of violence and instant dismissal. But when two months pass without pay, Mi-Thet and her fellow workers must confront their standover bosses to receive what they’re owed – and, in the process, attempt to reclaim their humanity.
Sharing the Busan International Film Festival’s top prize, the New Currents Award, The Maw Naing’s second feature uses its social-realist narrative – reminiscent of Ken Loach kitchen-sink dramas and the nonfiction works of Wang Bing (Youth: Hard Times and Youth: Homecoming, MIFF 2025) – as a symbolic repudiation of life under authoritarian rule in contemporary Myanmar. Casting actual textile workers in key roles and juxtaposing its fictional narrative with real-life footage of protests, military violence and villages reduced to rubble, Naing’s first feature in a decade is a rousing call to arms, at once personal and universal.
“The political grows increasingly personal in [this] punchy, heartfelt drama … An absorbing tale of individual growth and radicalisation is transformed into a stirring call to arms for the people of Myanmar.” – Screen Daily