Bleached Bones Avenue 2020

Directed by Akio Fujimoto

Myanmar-based director Fujimoto returns after his documentary-like feature drama Passage of Life (JC 2018) with an affective, drama-like documentary. The local Zomi people of the Chin State in western Myanmar dig to recover the remnants of 30,000 Japanese soldiers who fell in the “Battle of Imphal” 75 years ago—a form of daily labor for the Zomi that is complicated by the fact that many Burmese people died in the battle fighting for the Japanese. In this Japanese-Myanmar co-production, Fujimoto trains the camera to unravel the multiple perspectives and consider the act of digging up bones as both a metaphysical and physical act of reconciliation.