Caught between rural roots and urban opportunities, familial duty, friendship and forbidden carnal desire, young San Kyi (Nandar Myat Aung) struggles to find her place in Fruit Gathering, a sensitive Myanmar-Czechia-France co-production that just won Karlovy Vary’s top prize.

That’s an impressive achievement for Burmese writer-director Aung Phyoe, making his feature debut after several shorts. His flair for blending realist drama with more poetic, painterly imagery makes for a dreamy, hypnotic viewing experience, eased along by a confident, open-hearted performance from Nandar Myat Aung in the lead role. Fruit Gathering will be ripe for picking at further festivals, especially ones specializing in Asian and/or LGBTQ+ fare, possibly followed by niche distribution.

Self-transplanted with her mother (Tin Tin Ei) and grandmother from the countryside to industry-rich Yangon, San Kyi has so far managed to resist the pressure from her mom to get married or pursue a career in something upmarket like tech. Instead, eager for a job that doesn’t demand too much thinking, San Kyi works in a massive clothing factory, sewing seams all day in a ferociously noisy, scrap-strewn environment where the supervisor gets snotty if she takes a bathroom break without seeking permission first.

Incidentally, while the factory hardly looks inviting, the conditions don’t seem to be too bad compared to those seen in older documentaries about East and South Asian sweatshops. They’re comparable to what’s on display in, say, Chinese director Wang Bing’s doc Youth but without the company-owned residential housing. At least the workers are allowed to submit petitions circulated by labor organizers requesting better pay and more safety measures, although tellingly San Kyi refuses to sign lest she might get fired for it. A union leader (Wutt Yee Kyaw) pours scorn on her for not showing more solidarity with her colleagues.

Later, after she’s injured herself by a sewing accident, San Kyi will rethink her position on workers’ rights, but industrial relations in the textile industry are not the film’s main focus. It’s all background color, as much a part of the vivid landscape as the interludes where we see San Kyi back home visiting the mango farms and spirit-dance ceremonies of her agrarian childhood.  

At least it’s at this factory that San Kyi meets Theint Theint Oo (Nandar Myint Lwin), a young co-worker around the same age as San Kyi with a radiant smile and street sense to burn. The two young women start out just hanging together during their lunch breaks but soon grow inseparable. The script suggests early on that Theint Theint may be the kind of pal who always forgets to bring enough cash for dinner. A darker interpretation might posit that she sees San Kyi as little more than a mark, but the truth probably falls somewhere in a grayer area.

Either way, by the time San Kyi is buying nearly identical blouses for the two of them to wear on strolls around town, it’s pretty clear that she’s smitten with Theint Theint. The latter is ambiguously flirtatious and keen to have languid girls’ night sleepovers in the same bed, but also open about the fact that she’s got a man in the background, who is conveniently always away working in another country. Afraid of losing her new limerent object of desire, San Kyi entertains the thought of going abroad with Theint Theint to work as housekeepers or factory workers in somewhere affluent like Singapore or Malaysia.

Clearly, things are heading for a smash up when San Kyi lends Theint Theint a substantial amount of money. Somehow the tension is heightened by the fact that Theint Theint gets closer to San Kyi’s family, even accepting a job offer that comes through the local guy whom San Kyi’s mom was trying to set San Kyi up with as a potential husband. It all serves to underscore how narrowly female relationships are usually defined in highly traditional, painfully patriarchal Myanmar society. The intense feeling between these two young women could never be openly romantic, although no one bats an eye when they walk hand and hand through the streets, much the way Queen Victoria is said to have refused to sign legislation banning lesbianism because she wouldn’t acknowledge such a thing even existed.

Aung Phyoe suggests the messy, uncontrollable nature of desire via some slightly heavy-handed imagery of flooded apartments and generally juicy, watery, somewhat soluble imagery. But the story surprisingly shifts tack halfway through and becomes less interested in the two women’s relationship and more in San Kyi’s personal development, especially after some hard knocks change how she sees the world.

Every so often, the camera will linger on a tiny detail like a vase that has some emotional significance, or the light coming in a window. There’s a tiny hint that these cinematic still life pictures are being seen through San Kyi’s eyes, like scenes in a book told through limited third-person point of view. Indeed, there’s a faintly literary quality to the filmmaking, as if inspired by romance and high-brow fiction, but Aung Phyoe’s touch is feathery soft, as gentle as the soft thud of a mango falling from a tree.

Forget any bad buzz that there’s a funk at the box office, because it always boils down to product, as well as time and space. As we told you throughout the weekend, the live-action Moana was too close to Thanksgiving 2024’s Moana 2 on the calendar. Had it gone in place of Moana 2 at that point in time, then it could be poised to be a billion dollar grossing movie. But similar to domestic (somewhat), U.S. family movies are ruling the top of the global B.O. chart, however, Stephen Chow’s first movie as a director in seven years, Kung Fu Soccer, kicked its way into second place at the global B.O. Let’s dive in:

1.) Moana (Dis) $95.1M WW weekend ($52M int’l, $43.1M dom), Wk 1
The Polynesian princess and demigod Maui in-the-flesh didn’t pop off like a volcano with some very low openings. That said, ti was No. 1 (non-local) opening in Australia ($5.3M), France ($5.2M), Korea ($3.8M), UK ($3.7M), Germany ($3.4M), Spain ($3.1M) as well as Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Bahrain, Bosnia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovakia, Southern Africa, UAE, New Zealand, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Central America and Ecuador.

China was $1.2M, Brazil was $2.7M and Mexico was $3.4M. Toy Story 5 beat out Moana in the latter two markets. She’s getting some pulse in the Pan Pacific area, which is not surprising, not only with Australia, but Korea popping and the Dwayne Johnson movie ranking as the third highest non-local bow YTD in New Zealand, Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia.

2.) Kung Fu Soccer (Shenzhen) 1 terr, $73.6M (RMB 500.3M)WW weekend/Wk 1
Chow, the filmmaker behind such mainland China hits as 2001’s Shaolin Soccer ($42.7M WW) and 2004’s Kung Fu Hustle ($104.8M), arrives with a female-led spinoff to the former and rules the country’s B.O. over two days, ahead of second place title, the second weekend of Minions & Monsters by 9x ($8.1M). Kung Fu Soccer follows the underdog Emei team which is known for incorporating martial arts with their moves on the field. The release date here was, of course, timed to the World Cup. A great 9.4/10 on Mayan with a projection of $368M (RMB 2.5B) in the Middle Kingdom. Chow wrote and directed here, but doesn’t headline, his last appearance being in 2008’s CJ7. Encore Films out of Singapore has rights out outside of China, with a worldwide release still in the works.

3.) Toy Story 5 (Dis) 51 terr, $64.3M WW weekend ($45.3M int’l, $19M), Total $879.5M ($475.3M int’l, $404.2M dom), Wk 4
Buzz, Woody and Jessie beat Moana in Brazil and Mexico where the respective comes remain $22.7M and $66M (biggest outside the U.S.). Following the highest MPA opening weekend of all-time in Japan, pic’s second weekend there is the third highest MPA second weekend of all-time, dropping only -29% with a running cume of $30.8M. The fifthquel was also the top grossing non-local movie in Hong Kong, Taiwan and all the Latin American territories (except for Ecuador and Central America). Pic’s overall global haul makes it the 7th highest grossing Pixar movie ever, having just galloped past Coco ($814M) and Inside Out ($858M WW) and it’s the No. 3 MPA global release YTD. At the foreign B.O., it’s the third highest MPA title having just clicked past Devil Wears Prada 2 with $468M int’l B.O. Other updated territory comes include UK ($56.3M, No. 2 outside North America), China ($40M, No. 3), Australia ($26.1M, No. 5), France ($25.5M, No. 6), Spain ($17.4M, No. 8), Korea ($17.3M, No. 9), and Argentina ($16M, No. 10).

4.) Minions & Monsters (Uni) 80 territories $61M WW weekend ($39.8M int’l $21.1M dom), Total $281M WW ($172.1M int’l, $108.9M dom)/Wk 3
The guys obsessed with bananas, opened in eight CIS markets led by Kazakhstan with $488K at 95 sites. Overall take for the region was $800K at 416 screens. China lead the sequel’s holdover territories, pic’s cume there now $32.4M, surpassing the lifetimes of both Super Mario movies, Elemental, and Moana 2. Mexico made $3M, -33% in weekend dos for a No. 3 rank and a running total of $10.6M. Australia’s third weekend boosted by school holidays is $2.6M, -6% for a No. 3 rank behind Moana and Toy Story 5. Near $12M running cume. France’s second weekend was $2.5M, -9%, ranking third behind Moana and Toy Story 5, the cume now at $13.4M. Germany’s second weekend is $2.2M, ranking second behind the opening Moana, with a $10.2M running total. UK’s second frame was $2.1M, -54%, ranking No. 3 behind Moana and Toy Story 5 and a cume near $10M. Spain’s second frame is $1.6M in No. 2 behind Moana, -43%, for a $7.8M cume. Brazil posted a second weekend of $1.6M, +17% due to no World Cup, but third behind Toy Story 5 and Moana. Italy’s second frame of Gru’s henchmen was $1.4M, a solid No. 1 and a running cume of $5.5M. Moana doesn’t surf in until mid-August.

5.) Evil Dead Burn (WB/Sony/StudioCanal) $27M WW weekend ($13.3M int’l, $13.7M dom)/Wk 1
Sony has foreign except StudioCanal has UK ($1.2M opening), France ($850K) and Russia. American horror works in India, the country leading all territories with $1.5M. Upcoming major markets are Spain, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan.

6.) Obsession (Uni), 76 terri, $12M WW weekend ($8.2M int’l, $3.8M dom), $426.7M WW ($173.3M int’l, $253.3M dom)/Wk 9
Among the big holds, is Germany with a third weekend of $1.6M and a running cume of $8.6M. Nikki and Bear set their sights on Japan this Friday.

7.) Dhamaal 4 (18 terr, $9.1M WW weekend ($8.7M int’l, $467K dom)/Wk 1
The Hindi language adventure comedy is directed by Indra Kumar. Pic’s blurb: a group of eccentric, money-hungry misfits racing against each other to find a mythical treasure hidden on a remote island encountering a bumbling crew of modern pirates searching for the treasure as well. The first 2007 title did $10.3M in India, with 2011’s Double Dhamaal posting the same, and 2019’s Total Dhamaal even more with $22.2M (all unadjusted for inflation and currency swings).

8.) The Invite (A24) 23 terr, $8.1M WW weekend ($2.3M Int’l, $5.8M dom), Total $12.8M WW ($5.3M int’l, $7.5M dom)

9.Backrooms (A24) 52 terr, $7.4M WW weekend ($6M int’l, $1.43M dom) Total $375.5M WW ($181.5 int’l, $194.1M dom)/Wk 7
China fueled in its third weekend, a No. 4 place with $3.2M with a running cume of $21.8M in its third frame.

10. Supergirl (WB) 81 terr, $7.1M WW weekend ($3.4M int’l, $3.76M dom), Total $115.6M WW( int’l $49.4M, $66.2M domestic)/Wk 3