Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing’s documentary is about two midwives – one Buddhist, one Muslim – in Rakhine state in western Myanmar, on the border with Bangladesh; it is home to thousands of Rohingya Muslims who for decades have suffered paranoid bigotry from the country’s Buddhist theocracy. And like Barbet Schroeder’s film The Venerable W, this film is a reminder that, in this part of the world, being of the Buddhist persuasion doesn’t necessarily make you a kind and gentle saint.
Hla is the Buddhist midwife, notably imperious and sharp-tongued, who at one stage tries getting some medicine into a baby girl and hilariously snaps: “Take it, you little bitch!” Nyo Nyo is the Muslim who is intensely aware of the prejudice all around her and uneasily watches news reports of demonstrations against Muslims and “Muslim supporters”, which means her employers. She finally attempts to set up her own clinic, with the help of a savings-and-loan collective of Muslim women; this is all to the distinct scepticism of her Buddhist colleague, although their essential friendship asserts itself.
In fact, this film is a good deal more asymmetrical than you might assume from the film’s two-midwives publicity: really, it is chiefly about Nyo Nyo and her tenacity and her isolation in Rakhine state. The movie spans about five years, before and after the coup that toppled Aung San Suu Kyi (herself no defender of the Muslims) and also covers the period in which Nyo Nyo herself became a mother. It is a sombre movie, although there is a surreally funny moment when a local guy shows up and demonstrates his various dance moves to a titteringly bemused audience before announcing: “That’s how I slay it!” Yet this is a dark reminder that even childbirth, that most universal human experience, can be clouded by sectarianism and suspicion.
• Midwives is released on 30 September in cinemas.
