Arakan News Agency
The Japanese film “Lost Land,” which narrates the experiences of the oppressed Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar, won the Orizzonti Special Jury Prize at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival on Saturday.
The film is directed by Japanese filmmaker Akio Fujimoto, and it is scheduled to be released in Japanese theaters in the spring of next year. During the award ceremony, Fujimoto called for support for the Rohingya who appeared in his work, expressing his hope that their talents would gain global recognition.
The festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, went to the film “Father, Mother, Sister, Brother” by American director Jim Jarmusch, while the film “The Voice of Hind Rajab” by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania won the Silver Lion (Grand Jury Prize), based on the true story of a girl killed in Gaza.
The Rohingya film “Lost Land” had previously been featured at the Venice Film Festival, and it is the first film spoken in the Rohingya language that portrays the tragedy of the oppressed Rohingya minority with a full cast of Rohingya actors.
The film competed in one of the festival’s competitions and tells the story of a journey by a four-year-old boy and his nine-year-old sister who fled from a refugee camp in Bangladesh on a perilous journey to Malaysia to join their family, only to find themselves lost in Thailand after a tragic accident struck the overcrowded boat they were on.
More than a million Rohingya have fled from Arakan State in western Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh due to genocide by the Myanmar military in 2017, and violence by the Arakan Buddhist militias (Arakan Army) in 2023 aimed at taking control of the state.
The Rohingya live in camps in the Cox’s Bazar area of Bangladesh, which the United Nations classifies as the world’s largest refugee camp amid difficult conditions that drive many of them to undertake dangerous sea journeys in search of a better life in other countries.
