Oldenburg Festival Unveils Competition Lineup, Tribute to Exiled Filmmakers

The 30th edition of the Oldenburg Film Festival which is Germany’s premier indie movie festival is to honour dissident moviemakers Na Gyi and Paing Phyo Thu this year. 
 
The Myanmar director and the actress have been in hiding for more than three years as their public criticism of the February 1, 2021 military coup made them targets of the ruling junta. 
 
In the 2021 festival Oldenburg focused on a couple and their story, as well as on Na Gyi’s What Happened to the Wolf? It also screens the world premiere of its Myanmar youth comedy-drama <i>Munny: Diary of a Doinky</i>, starring Paing Phyo Thu. A love story of two female lesbians suffering from AIDS, painted and directed by Paing, playing the main female character, Eaindra Kyaw Zin who was not politically provocative but the film depicted LBGTQ + doomed to offend the military regime. Said to have been living in the wild state for ages, the wolf, for some reason or the other, became man’s foe and was killed. had been given to the festival after the coup but before the start of a filmmaking bout of the directors’ disappearance. The trailer of the film was a success on Oldenburg’s Facebook account for it received more than one million views. Eaindra was the recipient of the festival’s Seymour Cassel Award for best actress but did not collect her award in person because she had been imprisoned in Myanmar for protesting in the street. 
 
Na and Thu were Myanmar cinema’s ‘it couple’ before the coup Na is a renowned cinematist of Myanmar. Amongst the renowned screen stars of the organisation it includes the Myanmar Academy Award winner Paing. 
 
It is well known that civil residents went out into the street in opposition to military coup. Many people took to social media to share a picture of Paing Phyo Thu, giving a ‘fighting’ gesture similar to the movie The Hunger Games. On April 3, the military government declared them as acouint<|reserved_special_token_269|> vertical a ‘public threat’ and sought to arrest them for inciting civil servants to join the protests. 
 
With likelihood of the serving an indefinite prison term with a chance of being tortured at the hands of Kony’s rebels, the couple ran into hiding in an unknown country nearby, where they continue to be to date. But they are willing in their way to carry on the fight against the junta. “ there is no turning back now,” Paing said in a statement. ‘We said okay, we are going to do this, and we are going to die for it. ’ While in the shadows the filmmakers established The Artists Shelter for Myanmar Artists in exile. 
 
What Happened to the Wolf? will be part of Oldenburg’s tribute to the Burmese modernists Na Gyi and Paing Phyo Thu. and 2019s Mi, the first feature-length film that I and my team developed. Ki Aye, Mi transferred to the big screen from a reputed Myanmar novel and casts Paing as a happy go lucky woman who dies of tuberculosis in the 1940s. The film was also a critical success and made good business locally. Oldenburg will also screen three of Na’s short films starring Paing: The pieces of work are Guilt, Our Turn, and My Lost Nation. All the screenings of the tribute will be of no cost, any collected money at Oldenburg will be contributed to The Artists Shelter. 
 
Oldenburg on Tuesday also revealed some of the competition feature films, which will be shown during Oldenburg 2024 to be held between the 11th-14th September. These are Quentin Dupieux’s ‘The Second Act,’ a meta-movie comedy that opened in Cannes; ‘Telegraphic Letters,’ by Edgar Pêra, in Locarno; and Vincent Grashaw’s ‘Bang Bang,’ part of Tribeca, in which Tim Blake Nelson plays an ex-boxer determined to amend for the mistaught of his previous life. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs star will be seen in the upcoming Captain America: Best known for his role in 1992’s Maps to the Stars, within the context of Avatar, it will be interested to see Cuaron at work in 2008 in The Incredible Hulk as the scientist Samuel Sterns. 
 
Oldenburg world premieres of this year are Flieg Steil, a German drama film directed by Martina Schöne-Radunsk and Lana Cooper and James, a noir comedy film directed by Canadian filmmaker Max Train. 
 
Elektra from Hala Matar with Maria Bakalova (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm), Abigail Cowen (Stranger Things), and Jack Farthing (Spencer) will première in Germany in competition in Oldenburg. Thanks to Nayla Al Khaja – a talented Emirati from the United Arab Emirates, a European premiere of her psychological drama Three is going to take place during the festival. 
 
Other Oldenburg 2024 competition titles are the family drama Baby Brother by the British director Michael J. Long, the horror thriller Saint Clare by Mitzi Peirone, Saralisa Volm’s drama Am Ende der Wahrheit where Maria Furtwängler portrays a surgeon on the verge, the new wave movie $$ by the U. S. director Jake Remington shot both in the style of a documentary and guerilla style