YANGON DIVISION – Junta council has sentenced documentary director Shin Daewe to life imprisonment, according to a family member.
The documentary filmmaker and journalist was charged with Section 50 (j) and 54 (d) of the Anti-Terrorism Act. Family member Ko Myint Thu said that she has been sentenced to life in prison by a junta court in Insein Prison court in Yangon on January 10.
50-year-old director Shin Daewe has made several documentaries, some of which have been screened at international film festivals. Some of the documentaries have won the best documentary award at international film festivals.
She was arrested on October 15, 2023 when she went to pick up a drone ordered for filming online, said Ko Myint Thu.
He said that it was incomprehensible that a film director had been arrested and ordered to be charged with terrorist offenses like this.
“She did not commit any crime. She worked in the film business as her profession. After that, she worked on all humanitarian work, which is charity. Our family is amazed that what she is doing in this situation is being treated as a crime,” Ko Myint Thu said.
Director Shin Daewe won the award for “Now I am 13”, a 15-minute documentary about the life of a teenage girl from central Myanmar who was unable to get an education due to poverty and was filmed in 2013. The film won a silver medal at the Kota Kinab International Film Festival and won the Best Documentary Award at the Wathann Film Festival a year later.
Her next successful documentary called “Brighter Future” is about Phong Taw Oo Monastic Academy in Mandalay and won the Best Documentary Award at the Art of Freedom Film Festival, a local exhibition in 2009.
From 2005 to 2010, she also worked as a video journalist at DVB News.