– The director discusses a story of longing, ambiguity and unequal privilege, and how he merged social realism with memory, confinement and imagined escape
Myanmar director Aung Phyoe premiered his feature debut, Fruit Gathering, a Myanmar-Czech-French co-production, in Karlovy Vary’s Crystal Globe Competition. In conversation with Cineuropa, he reflects on the film’s long gestation, its intimate portrayal of desire and uncertainty, and the challenges of shaping a personal story within the realities of contemporary Myanmar.
Cineuropa: How did the initial image of a young woman near Yangon’s industrial area evolve into San Kyi and Theint Theint Oo’s story, and what did it reveal about San Kyi’s longing?
Aung Phyoe: For me, it’s not exactly the sadness, but more about the search for a better life, freedom, and the burden of expectation. Over the past few years, that is exactly what every Burmese youth has gone through. But if you look deeper, there is a difference in the privilege each individual holds. Some people can leave the country and build a proper life abroad, while others may not even be able to get a passport due to their race or religion. So, I want to write about two characters who have similar backgrounds but different levels of privilege as they grow closer to each other. As for San’s longing, it is definitely a part of me, my observations, inspirations from other media like literature, and my own way of understanding the people around me.
How did you balance the realities faced by garment workers with the emotional focus on the two women’s relationship, without turning the film into a conventional social-issue drama?
When I was young, back home, my grandparents ran a traditional weaving house where I spent my weekends and holidays, hanging around with the female factory workers. It was a family-like working environment, very different from the world of commercial garment labour, and it may be the unconscious reason I chose to set the story in that landscape – a place where closeness and intimacy wouldn’t immediately be called into question. As I carried out my research, I realised that the unfair treatment and social issues present there couldn’t be entirely ignored. So I had to set them into the background, ensuring they remained clearly present within the drama, without taking power away from the emotional story of the two women.
How important was it to keep Theint’s feelings ambiguous, so that affection, desire, need and possible manipulation remain unresolved?
I feel that’s how it is in real life. In these kinds of relationships, we can never truly be sure whether the other person reciprocates our feelings, or even loves us at all. If you reflect on it, sometimes you may feel they do care, but at other times, you’re not so sure. I feel love is never a binary thing, a simple “yes” or “no.” It’s a living emotion that’s constantly changing. We’re looking for something like eternity in these situations, and I think that’s part of the human tragedy. So I’ve deliberately kept it that way: neither the audience nor San Kyi ever gets a clear “yes” or “no.”
How did you approach queer intimacy within the film’s broader portrait of female repression, class pressure and social convention in Myanmar?
Queer stories in my region often lean towards two extremes: either the “cute” and sexually stimulating GL/BL genre, or social realism focused on how various social, parental and political pressures weigh on the characters. Neither approach captures the specific emotional landscape I want to highlight. Growing up surrounded by women – my grandmother and my mother – I became subconsciously aware of the social repression women face. Strangely, as I researched this, I discovered that such female intimacy is quite common. A traditional mother of two once confessed to me that she’d had a physically intimate moment with a female friend, and my mother remarked that some of her university friends’ “girl-love” situationships were considered a kind of fashion at the time. I came to realise that these kinds of female relationships carry a different kind of complexity compared to traditional gay relationships. I want to portray them as normal and natural within the setting of the Myanmar community.
How did you and cinematographer Thaiddhi develop the film’s visual language, balancing social realism with San Kyi’s inner world of intimacy, confinement and imagined escape?
Thaiddhi, who is also one of the producers, and I have worked together for about eight years. He was the cinematographer on two of my previous projects. We settled on the aspect ratio and the visual look at a very early stage, because I wanted the audience to feel the whole film as a memory, the way San Kyi does by the end. Then there was the challenge of the changing seasons; since we actually had to shoot continuously through the summer, the shifts in mood and tone were discussed extensively with both the cinematographer and the art director. The imagined landscape was also a huge point of discussion between us. Because he has a more European aesthetic, having studied at FAMU, and I’m more influenced by Asian cinema, having studied in India, it was a great experience to debate these perspectives and arrive at our final result: something that remains traditional and authentically Asian, yet never tips over the top.
