Myanmar
28'36'', 2023
DIRECTED BY
PRODUCED BY
Kaung Swan Thar
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Paing Aung
EDITED BY
Zaw Win Htwe
Built in the 19th century, this Tamil Hindu temple in Thanlyin across the Bago River from Yangon is unique in largely Buddhist Myanmar: this is a place where people from different religious backgrounds come to pray – in the hope that their wishes will be fulfilled. Fortune-teller ‘Yellow Mother’ is one of four inhabitants of Pilikan village who – in between lively spectacles of leaping cows and cow-catching – explain what the temple and its rituals mean to them.
Kaung Swan Thar was born in Thanlyin on the other side of the Bago River from the city of Yangon. He took up studies in history at Yangon’s Eastern University in 2019 but his desire to use images to tell stories has since drawn him to photography and, in 2020, he began training in filmmaking at Yangon Film School. His first film as a director, Dala Boatbreakers, screened at the prestigious Jean Rouch International Film Festival in Paris.