The Road To Mandalay is one of the piercing artworks of Asian cinema. It tells the story of two people who sneak into Thailand from Myanmar in search of a better life. What makes it so impactful is its simplicity and rawness. The narrative doesn't try to accentuate the throes of poor migrants as they struggle to eke out a living.

It follows a rather disinterested, albeit plaintive, subtext as the protagonists move across the border multiple times and explore different ways to work things out. As days go on, one can feel their optimism dissipate and anguish build up. The cinematography is breath-taking, particularly the countryside scenes which tend to be highly evocative. There are a few stellar moments with subtle background score which underscores the intensity of those scenes. There's a scene where the couple travel in a jeep as it passes through a dense mist of clouds and fog. Kkd Windows Se7en V1 on this page. The scene had a strong imprint on me and lingered on long after the movie was over.

Education has the power to change lives and break the cycle of disadvantage. To improve a young person’s chances to create a better economic future for themselves.

The movie carries an ominous overtone without making the plot over-dramatic. It does a good job of retaining emotive elements without compromising on realism. The characters are real and so is their pain. All in all, an unforgettable movie.

Chinese-Burmese director Midi Z's Bangkok-set drama, bowing in the Venice Days sidebar, revolves around the loves, fears and loathing of two migrant workers in the Thai capital. With hardly a pagoda, a palm tree or a pealing temple bell in sight, The Road to Mandalay has nearly nothing to do with Rudyard Kipling's orientalist ode to lands east of Suez. Set nearly entirely in nondescript working-class haunts in and around Bangkok — the titular city doesn't feature at all in the film — Burmese-born Taiwanese director Midi Z's fourth feature offers a slow-moving migrants' tale tagged with a short, sudden and surprisingly violent finale.

Having veered off on a tangent for the past two years with a pair of largely observational documentaries (, ) and a video installation ( My Folks in Jade City), Z has returned to where he left off with his last fictional feature,. Revolving around a doomed romance, and boasting stunningly pristine camerawork and a bona fide film star in the shape of Kai Ko (of rom-coms You Are the Apple of My Eye and Tiny Times), The Road to Mandalay continues Z's march toward mainstream accessibility he began with Ice Poison. Z has managed to retain and refine much of his trademark aesthetic mix of static and long shots, elliptical conversations and a melancholic sonic ambience, despite (or because of) more resources available this time round — possibly thanks to the presence of Taiwanese showbiz svengali (and Ko's agent) Angie Chai as a co-presenter. Meanwhile, Jia Zhangke's longtime editor Matthieu Laclau has certainly helped make Mandalay a tauter affair than Z's previous self-edited outings.

A co-production with French and German outfits, The Road to Mandalay is well-placed for another long trek on the festival circuit after its bows at Venice and then in Toronto. Z will probably be looking at an even bigger commercial breakthrough in Taiwan after its November premiere as the closing film of the Golden Horses Film Festival, with Asian distributors — from Hong Kong or Southeast Asia — possibly dipping in afterward. Much more than Ice Poison — which, beneath the opiated haze, is essentially a relationship drama between two lost souls — The Road to Mandalay is a markedly universal story about two young lovers torn apart by their very different approaches in confronting their miserable, mortal toil in a foreign land. There's Guo (Kai Ko), who aims to return home to Burma after earning enough money in Bangkok; meanwhile, Lianqing (Wu Ke-xi, a regular in Z's fictional films since 2012's Poor Folk), is more than eager to swap her past with a plusher, urban future. Having briefly met on the Jeep that carried them from the Burmese border to the Thai capital, Guo and Lianqing reconvene as he bails her out of police custody after a police raid on the restaurant she works in, and then finds her a job at the textiles factory where he earns his living.