Burma VJ - Reporting from a Closed Country

Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) is a group of about 30 Burmese reporters who, armed with small video cameras and mobile phones, face down death to make a detailed record of anti-government demonstrations in September 2007 and their subsequent brutal repression. The footage is then smuggled across the border and broadcast via satellite from the headquarters in Oslo. For a time it was the only way in which the world could find out about the actual situation in the country, after foreign news crews were banned and Burma was closed to the outside world. This impressively compiled documentary offers an in-depth and extremely authentic record of the events of that time, when for the first time in 19 years Burmese came out en masse to support Buddhist monks on the streets of Rangoon. The film illustrates the indisputable importance of independent media in the fight against totalitarian power.