‘White Tiger Column’ Directors on How Myanmar’s Resistance Speaks to Political Youth Movements in Brazil, Serbia and the U.S.: ‘Revolution Is on the Lips of a Lot of People’

In 2021, 10 months after Myanmar’s military overthrew the democratically elected government in a coup, Canadian photojournalist Bryan Dickie heard of a rare opening to access the country. He acted swiftly. The experience of that trip inspired him to enlist long-time collaborators Robert Mentov and Dwight Jantzi, with the trio returning to Myanmar two years later and capturing the training regime of young recruits of the People’s Defense Force. The result of the six weeks on the ground is “White Tiger Column,” opening this year’s International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. For 45 days, the trio of filmmakers captured the lives of trainees and commanders as they readied to leave for the front and join the war. Through an observational lens, the directors reflect on the dichotomy of the situation: the mundanity of the lives of young kids who scroll on TikTok and sing mindlessly to Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber and the harsh reality of armed combat. Speaking with Variety ahead of heading to Amsterdam, Dickie mentions how he built “deep ties” with locals in Myanmar over 15 years of covering the area as a photojournalist. That, coupled with his close relationship with the Burmese diaspora in Canada, gave the filmmaker great knowledge of the country’s geopolitical situation. “I’ve also embedded with multiple different ethnic armed organizations over the years, so through all of that I built up a bit of a track record going into these areas.” “We just felt a clear creative collaboration,” adds Jantzi of the early days of working on the project. “Upon landing on the ground and shooting alongside each other, we were just working very closely, day by day, developing our shot list and working through our potential narrative arcs. Through Rob and my ongoing work as filmmakers and then Bryan and his deep knowledge of the context and the region, it just felt like a very cohesive, natural fit to work together.” Jantzi emphasizes the trio would have loved to have taken a few more trips to the country during development and shooting, but the situation was too precarious to allow the extra time. “The reality is that the situation changes so much week by week that you can’t even really plan your characters six months ahead,” he notes. “We got extremely lucky with timing and kept trying to extend our trip, and things kept changing and becoming a bit more contentious in the region.” That sensitivity extends to the subject of the documentary itself, with the directors keenly aware of the cultural and political nuances the project involved. Mentov mentions how the trio worked closely with the diaspora, as well as fellow Burmese filmmakers on the ground. “One thing we wanted to do was to maintain this observational approach.” “Essentially, we were just dropped into this jungle,” he goes on. “We were trying to understand it, but it was very similar to how the recruits were: dropped into the jungle and trying to understand it all. Cinematically, we really just wanted to film these conversations at a distance and give space for them as opposed to trying to drive a narrative in more of a traditional documentary style.” That desire is clearly reflected in the film’s visual and narrative language, with “White Tiger Column” foregoing traditional talking heads or extensive voice-overs cueing the viewer into minute details of the conflict in favor of letting the camera linger on seemingly mundane activities made poignant in this very specific context. The filmmakers also shot on longer lenses and employed a locked-off tripod technique to keep the camera static for stretched periods. Courtesy of IDFA Another “conscious” decision was to avoid showcasing explicit violence, with the film focusing instead on the training and conversations revolving around conflict. “We talked a lot about wanting to make a war film that didn’t show war,” notes Dickie. “I found it very hard to get people outside of the region to wrap their head around what is going on there because it’s so complicated and the bar of entry for understanding is quite high,” he adds. “With this documentary, we tried to switch our approach where instead of trying to explain or go into the hard details of Myanmar’s history and culture, what we did was focus on the universal, human themes like sovereignty, freedom and missing home.” This also spoke to our current political moment, where younger generations are taking central roles in political movements across the world. “White Tiger Column” opens IDFA mere weeks after Brazil re-elected Lula following historic demonstrations kickstarted by students from the Fluminense Federal University, and Serbia’s long-standing leader Aleksandar Vučić was overthrown by a student-led protest movement in the country’s snap parliamentary elections. Young people were also decisive in the recent midterm elections in the U.S., with the second-highest youth turnout in a midterm election in 30 years. “Revolution is on the lips of a lot of people,” says Dickie, with Jantzi adding: “We just hope this can be a portrait of what revolution could look like around the world. If democracy were to fall, would we have the courage and the power to fight? Over the years, there’s been this conversation about Gen Z and Gen Alpha not having what older generations had, but I think this picture of these kids leaving it all behind—video games, comfort—to fight for the future of their country is so beautiful.” Dickie intervenes to say that “the Spring Revolution in Myanmar is a very pure grassroots revolution and quite anarchic,” but it is also a “bit of a Catch-22.” “Although it is a beautiful revolution, at the end of the day, it is a revolution. I talk to these guys weekly; they are still in the jungle fighting. People are still dying in the mud. They are still being bombed from the sky. When talking about revolution, you can get caught up in the theory of it and the flowery language, but at the end of the day, this is war.” “White Tiger Column” is produced by Tom Edgerton for Lightwood Green in co-production with Nocte Films and Rugio!