Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country is Anders Østergaard’s 2008 documentary about Myanmar’s saffron uprising. It runs for a little under 90 minutes. An opening statement notes that the film “is comprised largely of material shot by undercover reporters in Burma”. Some scenes were also reconstructed to fill narrative gaps. The movie is an enormously effective depiction of events in Yangon during the six-week period from mid-August to late September 2007. It’s easy to see why it was showered with awards and nominated for an Oscar. Bathed in immediacy and authenticity, this is a really terrific piece of work.

The film is narrated by “Joshua” who, having been picked up and noted by police in Yangon in August, spends the whole of September coordinating undercover DVB video journalists from Chiang Mai, Thailand. That turns out to be part of the interest of the movie. In 2007, email was the main channel used to manage a network of reporters who captured footage in Yangon, smuggled it out to Thailand, and from there had it beamed by satellite to DVB headquarters in Oslo, Norway for onward transmission to the world’s major news organizations. It soon became the sole source for coverage of the saffron uprising on the BBC, CNN and a wealth of global outlets. It is also fed back into Myanmar through short-wave radio and satellite TV.

The early parts of the film are fascinating – Joshua’s bus ride to Yangon on August 15, the day it all started, and early protests in the city. But the most poignant sections come once the monks, mainly young, march for the first time in Yangon on September 18. From the outset, people gather on the streets to watch, and before long they are massing in deep crowds, peering from windows, balconies, rooftops – and always applauding. Officially, the monks are expressing solidarity with the people following the August fuel price increase, and seeking an apology from the government for maltreatment of some of their number earlier in the month – the reason why they hold their alms bowls upside down. But in this context, where really nobody was unaware of the mass movement in 1988, it’s impossible not to read into their daily marches a covert call for democracy. Indeed, the palpable euphoria of the people must have been driven by hope and desire for fundamental political change. Surely it was also to signal this that the monks filed past Aung San Suu Kyi’s gate on September 22.

Perhaps the only slight disappointment is that the crackdown, beginning on September 26, is not told as fully as it might have been. There is excellent footage of daytime military deployment around Sule on September 27. The narrator also states that thereafter there were no more monks on the streets, only students. When and how the saffron part of the saffron uprising was quelled, however, is not entirely clear.

Overall, this is a truly great documentary. Thankfully, Myanmar in 2014 is not the place it was in 2007. But it’s not totally different either, and this well-paced, compelling film remains essential viewing for anyone interested in the country.