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Poster for Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country

Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country

2008 · 1h 24m · UNRATED Documentary
Directed by Anders Østergaard

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Overview

Going beyond the occasional news clip from Burma, the acclaimed filmmaker, Anders Østergaard, brings us close to the video journalists who deliver the footage. Though risking torture and life in jail, courageous young citizens of Burma live the essence of journalism as they insist on keeping up the flow of news from their closed country.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
97%
Tomatometer
Fresh

Burma VJ celebrates the courage of the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), a group of underground journalists who risked their lives to document the 2007 uprising against the junta.

Leslie Felperin, Variety
Fresh

Burma VJ would be even more intense without its early announcement that some scenes have been restaged, putting the viewer in a regrettably uncertain relationship to what follows.

Rob Nelson, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Fresh

Narrated by a frightened journalist who trembles as he accumulates forbidden footage and provides a historical viewpoint, "Burma VJ" uses shocking video images and reconstructed scenes to create a coherent, mostly chronological account of what happened.

John Hartl, Seattle Times
Fresh

In traditional terms, this is hardly a film at all. It's more like a bootlegged YouTube video.

Jonathan F. Richards, Film.com
Fresh

Although directed by Denmark's Anders Ostergaard, the true heroes of Burma VJ are the cadres of guerrilla video journalists who secretly filmed the junta's brutal suppression of the popular revolt in the fall of 2007.

Michael Posner, Globe and Mail

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