I always forget how different the experience of watching a film with a big group of strangers is from watching something individually or even with a group of people you know. On Sunday, I found this difference to be even clearer when the group of strangers had a completely different collective experience and culture from mine.

On the recommendation of Nan San and Khun Oo, I went to a screening of Lose and Hope, a film about a group of young Karenni resistance fighters from Kayah State, also known as Karenni State in East Myanmar. Having missed the session for foreigners and Thai people earlier in the day, I briefly looked into the topic and watched the trailer, nervous that I wouldn’t understand the context or events of the film. As it turned out, watching the film (with English subtitles, thankfully!) in a room overflowing with members of the Burmese community of Chiang Mai provided an additional layer of understanding I would have missed with a different audience, namely the humor and community resilience.

Film poster for Lose and Hope screening

The film tells the story of a group of young Karenni people turned resistance fighters. It starts with them learning to fight, training to face the military junta who have derailed the country’s hopes of progress toward peace and democracy with the 2021 coup. The film follows the youths’ experiences on and off the battlefield, including love stories, grappling with grief, and the struggle to keep hope for the end of the revolution. In doing so, the film expresses the urgency of supporting the revolution and bringing the war to an end. It highlights that the people fighting this war on the front lines are youth – both in the resistance and the military; they are uncertain of how long they will survive and are unable to live normal lives until the war is over (pointedly expressed in the film’s song).

At the same time, the film still manages to find and create humor, both for the audience and the characters. As Nan San and Khun Oo explained to me on my first day here, humor is how their communities cope – it is a sign of resilience.

I come from cultures where war and pretty much any political topic is meant to be serious. It’s a sign of respect not to laugh or make light of these “serious” issues. And, even though I enjoy political comedy, the aversion to smiling or laughing at such issues is still ingrained in me. So, had I been a part of a different audience, I likely would not have laughed at the scene of a trainee who, mid-shower when a fighter-jet attacks the camp, slips and slides down a muddy hill while trying to put his pants on to join the fight, or when a couple snipers pause to consider whether or not to take their shoes off as they break into an abandoned building to shoot from the roof.

Far from lessening the horror at scenes of combat and death, the contrast between the room full of laughter and collective silence made the grief even more tangible. In fact, this experience made the war real to me in a new and horrifying way. Although I’ve been reading and hearing about it, the numbers and statistics were brought to life by the film’s depiction of the battlefield – messy, indiscriminate, and brutal – and by the audience, including the woman I heard crying in a bathroom stall after the film and the man beside me who looked down during each scene of violence.

And yet, after watching the film, when I was sitting in the courtyard outside the screening room with Nan San, Khun Oo, and their friends eating a Burmese pork dish, the question Nan San asked me with most concern was whether I got the jokes in the film, and she appeared relieved to hear that I had. Watching this film with my hosts and members of the Myanmar community, I found that the community demonstrates its strength and resilience by embracing and sharing both grief and humor.