Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
A view of the religious tensions between Muslims and Buddhist through the portrait of the Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu, leader of anti-Muslim movement in Myanmar.
Barbet Schroeder's documentary portrait of Ashin Wirathu is a chilling and singular piece of work — a close-up study of radicalization and hate speech emerging from an unexpected source (a Buddhist monk), making it genuinely novel and unsettling in its subject matter. The observational approach is effective at letting Wirathu condemn himself through his own words, and the cinematography capably captures Myanmar's landscape and religious settings. However, as a documentary, 'acting' is largely irrelevant and scores low by default, and the ending feels somewhat inconclusive — the film observes without fully synthesizing or resolving the tensions it documents, leaving viewers unsettled but without clear closure. The novelty of its subject and Schroeder's unflinching approach are its strongest assets.