Ko Pauk

Ko Pauk
ကိုပေါက်
Ko Pauk during an interview with VOA Burmese in August 2024
Born
Aung Min Naing (Burmese: အောင်မင်းနိုင်)

1972 (age 52–53)[1]
Pyay, Bago Region, Myanmar
CitizenshipMyanmar (revoked by State Administration Council in 2022)[2]
EducationUniversity of Yangon
OccupationsFilm director, screenwriter, activist and actor
Years active1998–present[3]
Known forFilm director; participant in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'etat
Criminal chargesSection 505(a) (incitement against the military)[4]
Criminal penaltyArrest warrant issued; property confiscated (2022)[4]
Criminal statusAt-large[5]
SpouseMin Kalayar Swe
Children2

Ko Pauk (Burmese: ကိုပေါက်; born Aung Min Naing (Burmese: အောင်မင်း‌နိုင်) in 1975) is a Burmese film director, screenwriter, activist and a former actor. He first started out as a actor and has played in over 400 movies and films. He has directed over 200 videos and 20 feature films. He is also known for his anti-junta movements after the 2021 Myanmar coup d'etat and for leaving his film career to join the resistance forces.[1]

Early life and education

Pauk was born in 1972[1] on Pyay, Bago Region, Myanmar. He first started out as a actor and screenwriter, before becoming a film director showcasing the documentaries and film-making for the People's Defence Forces, in which he became active since the 2021 Myanmar coup d'etat.[6]

Actor and directing career

Pauk started out his career as artist, film maker and director and has took part in 400 movies and films. He also has directed over 200 films and 20 feature films.[7][8]

Before the 2021 Myanmar coup d'etat unfolded, he was a respected figure in the Myanmar film making industry known for his storytelling talent and creativity. His filmography includes Baw Baw Ka Htaw (2018), Yoma Paw Kya Tae Myet Yay (2019), LadyBoy (2019), and The Dependant (2021).[9]

Post-coup career

He became prominent in joining the Civil Disobedience Movement after the 2021 Myanmar coup d'etat, in which he took to the role of a resistance anti-coup director and film maker, notable for his role in The Roads Not Taken (Burmese: မသောက်မိသောမိုးခါးရေး), a 30 minutes documentary film released in 2022. This film is based on a true story about a Myanmar Army captain who defected and joined the people's side and the CDM. The film was set to be shown in fifteen countries in five languages.[10]

In February 2021, the military issued an arrest warrant for Pauk among other celebrities. Pauk and six other individuals were wanted under section 505a of the Penal Code, which makes it a crime to demotivate government employees.[11] Pauk was accused of participating in and encouraging the Burmese population to join a growing general strike aimed at resisting the dictatorship, and using his platform to encourage civil servants to join the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) against the military coup. He went into hiding as a result.[10][12]

Rays of Hope (ရောင်နီလာရာလမ်း), an 1 hour and 45 minutes autobiographical documentary released in Japan in 2023, documents Ko Pauk's own life as an artist and director who became a revolutionary during the ongoing Myanmar civil war. He fled to the jungle after 2021 Myanmar coup d'etat, and since then he has been active in the resistance movement.[13][10] In an interview with Myanmar Now, he stated, "I made this film to show the rightness and humanity of a soldier's decision to stand on the side of the people."[14]

He had no cameraman or crew when he was directing and filming these documentaries. He had not only shot, edited, but also even added background music with that phone. Some of his friends helped with the final editing and subtitles. It was filmed entirely on an iPhone 11 Pro Max. He stated "I am the cameraman, I am the scriptwriter, I am the director, I am the set designer." He had to collect the uniforms of the military junta soldiers who had been killed or captured during the fighting.[1][15][1]

In 2025, he criticised the military propaganda film "Those Who Will Change the History of the Era" (ခေတ်သမိုင်းကို ဒုန်းစိုင်းမည့်သူများ) directed by Nay Toe among others. He stated "Their decision, their choice, their path. We also believe in the revolution together with the people, the people's suffering, our own suffering, the people's pain, our own pain. Whether the fans who supported us were happy or not, the fans' suffering that supported us, just like our own suffering, we stood on this side."[16]

Personal life

Pauk is married to Win Kalayar with a family and has two children. He has been a vocal advocate for the LGBT community in which he directed his film LadyBoy (2019), it is not described as a "gay film", but as a film about human experiences. Pauk is described as a "family-oriented man who values the bonds of love and unity within his home".[17]

On 21 February 2022, Ko Pauk's home in North Dagon Township was sealed off at the same time that authorities confiscated the apartment of activist Min Ko Naing.[4]

Filmography

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Han Thit (15 October 2022). "မိုးခါးရေမသောက်လိုသော တောထဲရောက် ရုပ်ရှင်ဒါရိုက်တာ" [A film director in the forest who doesn't want to drink the bitter rain water]. Myanmar Now (in Burmese).
  2. ^ "Myanmar junta revokes citizenship of NUG members, other activists". RFA. 12 March 2022.
  3. ^ "The Road Not Taken - Myanmar Fundraising Movie Night". 26 November 2022.
  4. ^ a b c "Min Ko Naing's apartment confiscated, film director Ko Pauk's home sealed off". Eleven Media Group Co., Ltd. Retrieved 15 December 2025.
  5. ^ "Six More Myanmar Celebrities to Face Arrest for Support of Civil Disobedience Movement". The Irrawaddy. 17 February 2021.
  6. ^ "Showtime for the Resistance: Revolutionary films screening worldwide". DVB. 28 April 2023. Retrieved 15 December 2025.
  7. ^ ဟန်သစ် (15 October 2022). "မိုးခါးရေမသောက်လိုသော တောထဲရောက် ရုပ်ရှင်ဒါရိုက်တာ". Myanmar Now. Retrieved 15 December 2025.
  8. ^ Li, Stephanie (3 September 2020). "Is Myanmar prepared to combat hoaxes on Facebook for the upcoming election?". KrASIA. Retrieved 15 December 2025.
  9. ^ "လွတ်မြောက်နယ်မြေရောက်နေတာကြာပြီဖြစ်တဲ့ ဒါရိုက်တာကိုပေါက်ရဲ့ "ကျ နော် အိမ်ပြန်ချင်ပြီ "ဆိုတဲ့ အိမ်အလွမ်းစာတစ်စောင် - Myanmarload Myanmar Latest News". Myanmarload (in Burmese). Retrieved 15 December 2025.
  10. ^ a b c "ဒါရိုက်တာကိုပေါက်၏ "ရောင်နီလာရာလမ်း"ရုပ်ရှင် တိုကျိုမြို့၌ပြသ၊ ရန်ပုံငွေကျပ် သိန်း ၉၀၀ ကျော်ရရှိ (ဓာတ်ပုံ)". DVB (in Burmese). 5 February 2023. Retrieved 15 December 2025.
  11. ^ Regan, Sandi Sidhu,Helen (18 February 2021). "Burmese actress goes into hiding as celebrities opposing Myanmar coup added to arrest list". CNN. Retrieved 15 December 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  12. ^ "Regime issues arrest warrants for celebrities who urged people to join Civil Disobedience Movement". Myanmar Now. 17 February 2021. Retrieved 15 December 2025.
  13. ^ ဧရာဝတီ (9 August 2025). "ကိုယ့်အနုပညာက နံပါတ်တစ် မဟုတ်တော့ဘူး၊ တော်လှန်ရေးက နံပါတ်တစ် (ရုပ်/သံ)". ဧရာဝတီ. Retrieved 15 December 2025.
  14. ^ "'Rays of Hope' documentary earns nearly 1000-lakh kyats from first screening in Japan". Burma News International. Retrieved 15 December 2025.
  15. ^ Tan, Lincoln. "Myanmar chaos and amazing Chinese faces: Two doco films screening this Sunday open windows into different worlds". NZ Herald. Retrieved 15 December 2025.
  16. ^ "အင်တာဗျူး | ကျနော်ကတော့ နေတိုးကို အံ့ဩတယ်". ဧရာဝတီ (in Burmese). 1 November 2025. Retrieved 15 December 2025.
  17. ^ "Director Ko Pauk: LGBT are my dearest friends". Retrieved 15 December 2025.
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