This Prison Where I Live

This is a film about two stand-up comedians –two men joined by spirit and separated by repression. Maung Thura, better known as Zarganar, is Burma’s greatest living comic. Relentlessly victimized by the military junta, he is now in prison. Michael Mittermeier, in stark contrast, is free to practice his art of humor and provocation as one of Germany’s leading stand-up comics. Like many of Burma’s leading dissidents, Zarganar has been silenced, jailed on a series of trumped up charges for outspoken criticism of the junta’s failure in responding to catastrophe in aiding victims of Cyclone Nargis despite his own relief effort. Before being condemned in 2008 by Burma’s generals to 59 years behind bars, now reduced to 35 years, Zaganar met director Bloomstein in secret and managed to, show him the cinemas prevented from screening his films, the bookstalls not allowed to sell his plays or poetry, and the makeshift TV studio where his fellow comedians rehearse on a stage that he himself is forbidden to tread.

Equally irreverent and famous for tackling taboo subjects in his comic routines, Michael Mitttermeier joined Bloomstein to film this man whose comic satire has made him known as the “loudspeaker” for his people, despite the price paid, in speaking out against the regime,.

-International Human Rights Film Festival of Paris

Print Source: Rex Entertainment, Justin Temple, justin.temple@rexentertainment.co.uk