Barbet Schroeders chilling documentary on Myanmars anti-Islam monk screens at Cannes

BY LILLY GREENBLATT| MAY 24, 2017

Swiss film director Barbet Schroeder’s latest documentary on Myanmar’s anti-Islam monk, Wirathu, screened at the Cannes Film Festival Saturday, providing a “chilling portrait” of ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, AFP reports.

The Venerable W is the third installment of Schroeder’s “Axis of Evil” documentary trilogy. The two previous films in the series depict Ugandan dictator General Idi Amin Dada and the controversial lawyer Jacques Verges — of the three, Schroeder says, “he has never been as scared by anyone as he was by a Myanmar Buddhist monk named Wirathu.”

“Even his name scares me,” Schroeder told AFP. “I just call him W.”

Wirathu, sometimes referred to as the “Buddhist Bin Laden,” was named “The Face of Buddhist Terror” on a 2013 cover of Time magazine for his anti-Muslim hate speech and inciting of riots against Myanmar’s Rohingya population.