Source from Indiewire

In Luc Besson’s deeply felt epic “The Lady,” Hong Kong action icon Michelle Yeoh embodies Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the Oxford graduate who became the figurehead for Myanmar’s fight against military dictatorship.

Suu Kyi, the Burmese daughter of slain independence hero General Aung San, was placed under house arrest in her home country for heading the National League for Democracy. She was released after 15 years in detention in 2010, while Besson and Yeoh were in the midst of filming.

“The Lady” starts out in the 1980s during the Burmese student protests and tracks Suu Kyi’s tumultuous life until her release. It centers on the little-known love story between Suu Kyi and her British academic husband Michael Aris (David Thewlis), who died of cancer in 1999, while she was under house arrest. As the film makes clear, Aris played a key role in campaigning for Suu Kyi’s Nobel Peace Prize win in 1991. (The film will have its qualifying run December 2-7 in Los Angeles, followed by a wider release in February.)

Indiewire spoke with Yeoh about how she came to the project, learning Burmese and the pressure she felt in taking the role.

For the rest story: Indiewire

A film about the life of Aung San Suu Kyi (born June 19, 1945), the Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Aung San Suu Kyi is considered a Burmese democracy icon and she is one of the strongest living voices for freedom and justice in the world. She had been unjustly detained by the government of Myanmar (Burma) and under house arrest for 15 out of the past 21 years – beginning in the months before the 1990 general election in which her National League for Democracy party won 81% (392 of 485) of the seats in Parliament.

The film tells a poignant love story of one of the world’s most prominent prisoners of conscience, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the last ten years of her marriage to the academic Dr Michael Aris, who remained in Oxford to raise both their children in her absence, while tirelessly campaigning behind the scenes to try to secure her release. When Dr Aris was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1999, the Burmese authorities refused permission for him to visit her — offering instead that she could leave and return to Oxford – though she would never be allowed back into Burma. Suu Kyi was confronted with a terrible choice — one whose consequences would be irrevocable; her husband and children — or her country.

The title of the film, “The Lady,” is the name by which Aung San Suu Kyi is known by the Burmese people who see her as a beacon of grace and courage against the odds, and who risk incurring the wrath of the authorities for publicly uttering her name. For more info: http://michelleyeoh.info/Movie/thelady.html