Border-crossing and the narrative of the minor: Midi Z’s The Road to Mandalay

Abstract

This article studies Midi Z’s The Road to Mandalay (2016) as a cinematic representation of Deleuze’s ‘minor literature’. I argue that the film gives rise to collective utterances against social and economic hegemony, particularly in its portrayal of Burmese immigrant characters who, as Agamben’s ‘bare life’, are subject to the violence underlying the biopower of neo-liberalism. A diasporic Burmese Chinese, Midi Z adopts the convention of cinema verité and fictionalizes the social reality of the migrant Burmese community. The Road to Mandalay articulates the pathos of those who are deprived of civil rights and who, in their negotiation with the exploitation of global capitalism, manage to survive in an interstitial space. The article unpacks the way the film allegorizes such a struggle in moments of surrealist and transcendental visions.