Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country

September 2007, Burma. In a country under military rule for forty-five years, a fuel price rise ends in the street. First a handful of people, then Buddhist monks, then tens of thousands. There is no foreign press in the country; the only people recording any of it are a few Burmese journalists working with small cameras. They get the footage over the border to a broadcaster in Norway, and from there to the world. Being caught means prison, and often worse. Anders Østergaard directs the Danish documentary; eighty-four minutes. It was nominated for an Oscar in 2010. Some of the footage is real and some was reconstructed with the people who lived it, which the film states at the start. Some critics found the use of reconstruction inconsistent in a film about journalism.