What is a Forgotten War? Yemen, Congo, Sahel… The qualifier is frequently used for conflicts that make the headlines. For Burma, the amnesia is such that there is simply no room to lament it. Those who manage to bring the Burmese civil war to the news, such as this Saturday at 6:35 p.m. on Arte Burmanie: the Chin resistance by director Antoine Védeilhé, already have too much to do simply immersing the public in this unknown tragedy. No time for victim postures.
The author, who passed through China, gained notice for a high-risk investigation into the mass internment of Uyghurs in 2019. The now New Delhi-based journalist managed to miraculously sneak into Chin State, in western Burma. Obtaining a direct testimony, quite unique, of life, and death, in the poorest region of this country which is now the poorest in Asia. After the coup, the National Chin Army, the old guerrillas of this oppressed Christian ethnic group for 70 years, was one of the very first to take up arms again, despite its rickety troops and the total lack of international support.
This is already the main merit of this documentary: to discover the Chins, little-known mountaineers, tough and sensitive, while the Burmese civil war is usually treated from the outside, or by beaten paths and usual entrances, in particularly the Karens, another eastern minority whose access is much easier from Thailand. The public will probably not be fully aware of the difficulty of accessing this less publicized area, and therefore of the exclusivity of these images, as the safety of reporters and those who help them imposes to throw a modest veil. on trade secrets.
The other notable interest of the documentary is that it managed to deal with all aspects of the conflict: meeting the leaders of the armed resistance in their base of Camp Victoria, heavily bombed in January 2023; introduce the volunteers, doctors, young fighters, humanitarians, who sacrificed everything for their “revolution”; following a family of displaced civilians in the town of Thantlang, a small town scarred by the fighting; and even show a wooden hut just vaporized by the junta’s air force, families lamenting over the smoking rubble. A very difficult panorama to achieve, whereas, in these regions, each element is often separated by long and perilous days of roads.
So much so that the box “Arte Reportage”, at the forefront of documents in conflict zones, usually held at 26 minutes, has increased to more than 37 minutes to condense all the testimonies reported by reporters. Sign if any that Burma deserves more time on the airwaves and on the screen. What also brings to life the intensity of this invisible conflict. In the scenes that take their time to camp, the characters sometimes whistle the bullets, reminding us that the danger is indeed present. Because even in these high valleys so far from the big cities still under the control of the military, death can fall on peasants who demand nothing but dignity. Endlessly fueling the infernal cycle of war. “May my sister’s blood liberate this land”, implores a villager in front of the family home devastated by the bombardments.
Burma, the Chin resistance, available on Arte.tv until June 10, 2026.
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