“Fruit Gathering” won the Crystal Globe at Karlovy Vary Film Festival on Saturday.
Directed by Aung Phyoe, it “begins as a lush and meditative portrait of work and friendship before morphing, unexpectedly and organically, into a harrowing drama of obsession and queer desire.”
Set in contemporary Myanmar, it follows the friendship and connection that forms between two young women working at a textile factory.
“My producers have gone through many difficulties to make this film – and they had to deal with me, too. I don’t know why they believed in me. I don’t believe in myself,” said Phyoe during the ceremony, also thanking his mother: “She has been the mother of a long-suffering artist for many, many years.”
“I wanted to make a film that was very atmospheric, maybe, and also very restrained because it was a world I knew,” he told Variety.
