Once Upon a Time There Was a Mom

Lin Htet Aung plays in an imaginative way with film language as well as film history. Telling the story of a man undergoing a transformation after his wife’s death, the film's dysfunctional family represents Myanmar’s complex history – while drawing parallels with the Buddhist story Vessantara Jātaka. The filmmaker also adds a new work to the cinematic archive of the country, where a major part of film history has been damaged or destroyed.

– Koen de Rooij