When the Myanmar army and a Chinese corporate giant forced Indigenous Kachin people off their ancestral land to build the massive Myitsone Dam, Grandmother Lu Ra stood her ground. She and fellow activist Ja Hkawn struggle to save the confluence of the sacred Irrawaddy River and build a movement, mentoring young female law student Hkawn Mai. A Kachin punk rock band of pastors, BLAST, also takes action, transforming their love songs into protest anthems. Our film follows these activists, from their underground beginnings during Myanmar’s military junta rule, to supposed “democratic” reforms and a sudden military coup. During such periods of fledgling democracy and dictatorship–in Myanmar and globally–our film asks how ordinary people can use the power of music, organizing and women’s leadership to challenge authoritarianism.

As an Asian women-led film team, it was important to us for our film to center the unsung women champions of environmental justice. For us, combatting the climate crisis requires not only an understanding of and concern for its problems but the will to envision creative and empowering solutions. Our film encourages its audience to imagine different ways of living and relating to all those around us; moving away from treating land, rivers and the environment as resources from which to extract, instead treating them as the essence of our collective survival. We believe that showing relationships of spiritual ecology can help contribute to a shift in attitudes - realizing the urgency of Indigenous self-determination and women’s leadership at the frontlines of the global climate crisis movement.