Midwives film review — complex portrait of a Buddhist and Rohingya odd couple

Director Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing’s debut documentary feature casts an unwavering gaze on two women living in Rakhine State, western Myanmar, an area where the Muslim Rohingya people have endured persecution and ethnic cleansing for decades. And yet, despite the sound of gunfire nearby, life goes doggedly on.

Hla, a foul-mouthed Buddhist midwife, and her Rohingya sometime friend and student Nyo Nyo run a clinic that accepts patients from both communities until attacks by locals fired up by anti-Rohingya propaganda make that almost impossible. Although Nyo Nyo cares for Hla’s aged mother and they go shopping together for blouses on a day of girly bonding, Hla still often spouts racist vitriol about Nyo Nyo, decrying her “darkness” and ascribing her faults to her ethnicity.

Meanwhile, determined to help her community, Nyo Nyo raises funds with a local savings and loan society in order to build a medical centre in her village, occasionally dipping into the coffers for expenses, and prepares to have another child.

Interlaced with remarkable, citizen-shot footage of military crackdowns in which people in the street are shot at, this unflinching work shows how conflict pulls people apart and — also sometimes brings them together. The two midwives at the centre are both complex and flawed — bitchy, funny, sometimes selfish — and occasionally extremely noble.

★★★☆☆

In UK cinemas from September 30