North American Premiere

Old ladies smoke cigars. The military runs the country. The Internet, democracy and filmmakers are banned. Welcome to Burma. An old lady waits on a street corner in bustling Rangoon. Ethel is an illegal tour guide in a country with few tourists. She takes the filmmaker on a tour of the people’s struggle for freedom against the ruling military junta. She also wants to tell her own story, her role in Burma’s history. But she is afraid to talk on the street. She thinks she's being followed, “soldiers are watching us”. But there is no one watching us, no one interested in a crazy old woman. How do you fight someone you can’t see?

Selection
Perspektiv International Human Rights Film Festival, Nuremberg Germany 2007.

Sammy Riley
Born in 1979, Sammy Riley grew up in Australia and studied film as part of a degree in Journalism. Since then he has specialised in ‘no-budget’ films, stealing tapes and borrowing equipment to make documentaries about ordinary people leading extraordinary lives. Today, Sammy lives in Bogotá, Colombia, where he is making documentaries and working with internally displaced refugees.