Une histoire birmane

Directed by

Alain Mazars

Two parallel narratives. The first follows a present-day investigation by a group of Burmese through Mandalay, Maymo, Myaungmya, Twante, Syriam, Insein, Moulmein and Katha, where from 1922 to 1927 the most celebrated Western writer in Myanmar, George Orwell, worked as a policeman for the British Empire. The second narrative mirrors the first in the here and now : a journey into the land of fear, where the protagonists are the Burmese, Orwell and today's Western world. Having just taken a step toward escaping the hold of dictatorship, the characters of this film begin to give new meaning to their own lives, as if the reading of the English author's major work "1984" has had a revelatory effect on them. It is in this Burma, which we know to be governed by magic and spirits, that Orwell's ghost and the incarnation of the characters from his beacon novel are conjured in this film.