In “Fruit Gathering,” director and writer Aung Phyoe consciously avoided exploring the “social” impact of the relationship between two repressed women, creating a sense of alienation but also deep intimacy.

The film, which premieres at the Karlovy Vary festival as part of the Crystal Globe competition and is co-produced by Myanmar, the Czech Republic and France, is set in contemporary Myanmar and follows the friendship and connection that forms between two young people, San Kyi and Theint Theint Oo, who work in a textile factory in Yangon for a year and a half.

Phyoe, who makes his directorial debut with “Fruit Gathering,” grew up reading more literature and then discovered auteur cinema outside his country. When he began writing the script (chosen to be developed in 2020 through Locarno’s Open Doors co-production platform), he was drawn to investigate the “affection or kindness of others” outside of one’s own family.

“Which somehow seems beautiful, but at the same time it’s very conditional,” Phyoe says of the film based on the social class she grew up in in Myanmar. “Everything in the world is changing and nothing is consistent, this type of relationship will never last. I know those feelings through my life and my education.”

Phyoe was inspired to focus a film on the female connection of the women around him, both his family and his best friends: “I really saw this complication, which is not always simple. Sometimes they get angry over something that is so small to me.”

She also points out that queerness among women is “much more accepted” in her country than among men: “Closeness between women is very common. You can see the other girls in the painting.” [of the film]”They may not be couples, but they are holding hands and touching each other.”

The textile factory setting came from Phyoe’s father, who worked in agriculture, as well as his own research dating back to 2016. Phyoe’s experience as a filmmaker comes from directing short films and studying editing at the Mumbai-based Whistling Woods International school, which trained him to always focus on the “rhythm” of the environments he explores.

With Thaiddhi as cinematographer, Phyoe set out to film “Fruit Gathering” in a 4:3 aspect ratio, which quickly became a learning experience because “he realized that it’s very difficult to frame because you can’t have a proper close-up.”

“I wanted to make a movie that was very atmospheric, maybe, and also very sober because it was a world that I knew,” Phyoe says of the visual aspect. “But still, there is some kind of rebellion [in there].”

In fact, “Fruit Gathering” is the first Myanmar film to premiere in Karlovy Vary, so audiences watching the film in the Czech Republic may be experiencing their country’s cinema for the first time.

“For us, we are trying to achieve our own national film language. We are very behind and for most things we have no support, it is very difficult to make films in this country,” says Phyoe. “We also have to be very careful that the political things are very subtle. For me personally, I try to achieve the rhythm in the film, which I hope resonates with my own lived experience.”