The Venerable W.
55th New York Film Festival
September 29 - October 15, 2017
Barbet Schroder’s portrait of an Islamophobic Burmese monk who has led hundreds of thousands of his Buddhist followers in a hate-fueled, violent campaign of ethnic cleansing is revelatory and horrifying.
Q&As with Barbet Schroeder following the screenings on 10/13 and 10/14
The Islamophobic Burmese monk known as The Venerable Wirathu has led hundreds of thousands of his Buddhist followers in a hate-fueled, violent campaign of ethnic cleansing, in which the country’s tiny minority of Muslims were driven from their homes and businesses and penned in refugee camps on the Myanmar border. Barbet Schroder’s portrait of this man again proves, along with his General Idi Amin Dada (1974) and Terror’s Advocate (2007), that the director is a brilliant interviewer, allowing power-hungry fascists to damn themselves with their own testimony. His confrontation with Wirathu—a figure whose existence contradicts the popular belief that Buddhism is the most peaceful and tolerant major religion—is revelatory and horrifying. A release from Les Films du Losange. Special thanks to French Cultural Services.
Preceded by:
What Are You Up to, Barbet Schroeder? (2017, 13m), in which the director traces the path that led him to Myanmar, a center of Theravada Buddhism, where racial hatred was mutating into genocide.
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