Indie Meme Review: Midwives

With the innocence of childbirth shadowed by the echoing of bombs in the background, Midwives follows the daily interactions of Hla, a Mayanmar midwife, and her first ever assistant, Nyo Nyo.

As the majority of the country begins to unite against the Rohingya population, the Muslim minority within the Rajhine region, Hla, a Buddhist, continues to aid them. With only a handful of her patients being Buddhist, Hla primarily serves Muslims with Nyo Nyo, a Muslim herself, aiding her through translating as most patients don’t speak Rakhine, the region's native language. To Nyo Nyo, it’s a way to give back to her community during this stressful time. Without the clinic, the community would have nowhere to go, limited by nothing more than their religious beliefs.

Filmed by director Snow Hnin El Hlaing over the course of five years, Midwives shows audiences a conflict they may only have seen on television. The film makes the conflict feel more personal, compared to the watered-down versions streamed across news cycles at the time. Beyond that, it gives insight as to how the conflict evolved, with news clips of the conflict and violence being scattered throughout the film, and a constant reminder of it hanging over each interaction. Watching the progression of the situation not only causes tension on the national level but within this smaller community, Hlaing shows the difficulty for Hla and Nyo Nyo to continue working together during this time with so many factors pitting them against one another.

Midwives, which was acquired in January by PBS for its POV programming, is a powerful film about the complexity of not only being women within a traditional society but with the additional factors of propaganda and violence being added in. With constant threats to their safety each moment the two healthcare providers are together, it depicts the difficulty of continuing an unlikely friendship when it feels as though the entire world is willing them apart.

---

Midwives

Southwest Premiere

Indie Meme Film Festival April 14-24. Tickets and details at indiememe.org.