"Midwives"

We are pleased to bring the film "Midwives" to the Heinrich Böll Foundation as part of our Myanmar Film Screenings.

After the film, we talk to filmmaker Hnin Ei Hlaing (Snow) and Carine Weiss, Public Health Expert on Sexual and Reproductive Health, about women's health in Myanmar.
 

"Midwives"
Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing | MM | 2022 | 92 Min. | Original with English subtitles | Trailer

Where do you go when you're heavily pregnant and in labor - but you can't move freely? Muslims from the persecuted Rohingya minority in a small village in Myanmar have only one chance: the clinic of the Buddhist Hla. She works side by side with the Muslim Nyo Nyo as a midwife. And risks her own safety every day to do so. For the country is permeated by strict ethnic segregation. She encourages Nyo Nyo to follow her great desire and provide for the health of her community on a permanent basis. But although Nyo Nyo's family has lived in this place for generations, she is still despised as an intruder. Nevertheless, she wants to defy her opponents - and even plans to build her own clinic. Then the political situation becomes more and more tense and the violence in her village also increases.

Midwives, a film about a midwife and her apprentice. That sounds like a simple story - but in fact, it's full of twists and turns.
The midwife, Hla, is Buddhist, part of the majority population in Myanmar. Her apprentice, Nyo Nyo, is Muslim, part of the Rohingya minority that has been denied basic human rights. They get along - but they also personify the tensions between the communities.

The film won a Special Jury Prize for Excellence In Vérité Filmmaking at the Sundance Film Festival.

If you have any question please contact mia.kruska@boell.de

» Participation on site
at the the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Conference Center, Schumannstr. 8, 10117 Berlin

Please register. Unfortunately, the number of seats is limited. Should the room capacity be exhausted, we will transmit the conference via video to other rooms. We would like to point out that there is no entitlement to a seat in the room.