In “Fruit Gathering,” director and writer Aung Phyoe consciously avoided exploring the “social” impact of the relationship between two suppressed women, creating a sense of alienation but also deep intimacy.
The film, which is premiering at the Karlovy Vary festival as part of the Crystal Globe competition and is co-produced by Myanmar, Czech Republic and France, is set in contemporary Myanmar and follows the friendship and connection that forms between two young women, San Kyi and Theint Theint Oo, working at a textile factory in Yangon over the course of a year and a half.
Phyoe, who marks his directorial debut with “Fruit Gathering,” grew up reading more literature and later discovered arthouse cinema outside of his country. When he started writing the script (chosen to develop in 2020 through Locarno’s Open Doors co-production platform) he was drawn to looking into the “affection or kindness of others” outside of one’s family.
“Which somehow feels precious, but at the same time is very conditional,” Phyoe says of the film based around the social class he grew up in around Myanmar. “In the world everything is changing and nothing is consistent, such kind of a relationship will never last. I know those feelings through my life and my upbringing.”
Phyoe was inspired to center a film on female connection from the women he was surrounded by from both his family and best friends: “I really saw this complication, which is not always straightforward. Sometimes they are getting angry for something which is so small for me.”
He also notes that queerness among women is “much more accepted” in his country than with men: “The closeness between women is very common. You can see the other girls are in the frame [of the film], they may not be couples, but they are holding hands, touching each other.”
The textile factory setting came from Phyoe’s father who worked in agriculture, as well as his own research dating back to 2016. Phyoe’s experience as a filmmaker comes from directing shorts and studying editing at the Mumbai-based school Whistling Woods International, which trained him to always focus on the “rhythm” of the settings he explores.
With Thaiddhi as cinematographer, Phyoe was set on shooting “Fruit Gathering” in a 4:3 aspect ratio, which quickly became a learning experience because he “realized it’s very difficult to frame because you cannot have a proper close-up.”
“I wanted to make a film that was very atmospheric, maybe, and also very restrained because it was a world I knew,” Phyoe says of the visual look. “But still, there’s some kind of rebellion [in there].”
In fact, “Fruit Gathering” is the first film from Myanmar to premiere at Karlovy Vary, so audiences checking out the film in Czech Republic may be experiencing their country’s cinema for the first time.
“For us, we are trying to achieve our own national language of cinema. We are very behind, and for most of the things we don’t have support, it’s very difficult to make films in this country,” Phyoe says. “We also have to be very careful that political things have to be very subtle. For me personally, I try to achieve the rhythm in the film, which will hopefully resonate with my own lived experience.”