FilmAid Asia held its 6th Mae La Film Festival on the evening of Friday 8th February 2019. The outdoor cinema screening event runs in the 3 zones of Mae La simultaneously in Zones A, B and C giving an opportunity for everyone to attend.

The Mae La Film Festival has been held for the past 5 years as part of our psycho-social activities to raise spirits, bring inspiration and to encourage community interactivity and of course, to bring laughter and enjoyment! We also include some short awareness raising films before the main feature including a film from KSNG (Karen Student Network Group) this year.

With Disney’s kind permission, the 6th Mae La Film Festival featured the superhero family animation film INCREDIBLES 2, which focuses on the family dynamic and working together as a team.

Members of the Camp Committee gave welcome speeches and this year youth from the Karen Student Network Group in Mae Sot gave encouragement to the audience.

Our FilmAid Team were spread into 3 groups and set up balloons and posters together with the children who waited with excitement for the film to start.

The Festival opened from 6.00pm with music and songs as the audience found their seats and started at 6.30pm as it began to get dark around 6.45pm and finished at approximately 9.30pm.

In the football ground - entrepreneurial refugees set up food stalls selling warm snacks as the temperature dropped from the usual 35 degrees to a more comfortable 28 degrees!

The outdoor screening acitvites are always an uplifting experience - to see cinema under an open sky is a magical experience - and in Mae La the night screenings are a special occasion made possible by kind permission of the Camp Commander.

We plan to hold screenings of the film in the other camps next month.

We thank the Camp Commander for giving us both his kind permission and Or Sor support to hold the Festival again this year and also for all the support from the Camp Committee, Section Leaders and members of the Security teams in Mae La.