The Beer Girl in Yangon

Escaping the dark world of a beer stand, Lily (17) enters another magical universe to find love and hope.

Pitch

Synopsis

Lily (17) works at a beer station – a typical outdoor beer stand in Myanmar – serving customers, when she gets involved romantically with a karaoke singer named Moon. Lily has acute endometriosis (painful menstruation) from which she suffers but at the same time can transport her into another universe, giving her strength and a voice that she never has in real life.

In this other universe, she always encounters a mysterious older man that raises her curiosity until he appears in real life at the beer station as her customer. She starts to build a platonic relationship with him that causes a complication with her relationship with Moon.

Constant pressure forces her into prostitution. Lily must escape the grim fate in front of her by keeping her dreams to become a singer alive.

Director statement

I grew up under the shadow of my father’s involvement in politics, which resulted in social exclusion and constant fear of military persecution. With an absent father and a mother struggling with her mental health, my sister and I were forced into early independence. I had to work as underpaid teenagers at a beer station in Yangon.

In many ways, my sister and I raised each other. When she experienced her first menstruation, there was no one to guide us through the physical and emotional changes. We learned together about the complexities of womanhood. I watched my sister struggle with emotional turbulence, and through her, I came to understand how difficult it can be to exist as a woman in a world that offers little support. Yet she always carried a dream: to sing, to live freely, and to explore her identity without fear.

Today, Myanmar has once again fallen under military dictatorship, and Yangon feels as dark as it used to be. Yet when I think back to my teenage years at the beer station, my memories are not only marked by brutality. Beneath the harsh presence of the military, I remember moments of tenderness and solidarity. Despite being haunted by fear and violence, these women helped one another and find small ways to thrive.

The Beer Girl in Yangon is a semi-autobiographical film inspired by these memories. The character of Lily is a blend of my sister and myself. We often joked that we were born at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and in the wrong bodies.

In this film, menstruation is not portrayed solely as personal trauma. It becomes a metaphor for the country itself, a nation bleeding under the weight of repeated military coups. Bleeding becomes a sign of survival, not only suffering.

This film is a tribute to my sister, my mother, and women everywhere who grow up in the shadow of trauma. Through this story, I want to give a voice to my sister and to women like her, encouraging them to continue striving for something better.

Director biography

SEIN Lyan Tun (1980, Myanmar) is a filmmaker currently living in exile in Paris. His short film Everybody's Gotta Love Sometimes was selected for Busan International Film Festival 2023 and won the Sonje Special Mention Award. His short Late Blooming in a Lonely Summer Day screened at Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, Festival du Court Métrage de Clermont-Ferrand and Locarno Filmmakers Academy. He is an alumnus of Berlinale Talents 2022, FAMU Summer Filmmaking Campus, Talents Tokyo and the American Film Showcase Fellowship. The Beer Girl in Yangon is his first feature film, which won development prizes from CNC and Swiss Films at Locarno Open Doors 2021 and was selected for Cannes L'Atelier Cinéfondation 2022 and Torino FeatureLab 2023.

Huidige status

We are in advanced development entering pre-production. 

Goals

We are looking for potential partners who can contribute with gap financing, a sales agent, distributors and festivals.