Sai Nyan Linn Sett

Sai Nyan Linn Sett is an award-winning filmmaker from Myanmar. His works explore repressed human emotions, ordinary lives and personal stories shaped by Myanmar’s social and political struggles. As a filmmaker, he is involved in writing, script development through workshops, directing, and editing.

As part of the anonymous Myanmar Film Collective, Sai contributed as the writer and director of the docu-fiction ‘Myanmar Diaries’ (2022) which captures life after the 2021 Myanmar military coup. At its premiere at the 2022 Berlin International Film Festival, ‘Myanmar Diaries’ won the ‘Berlinale Documentary Award’. The film also won the Tony Elliot Impact Award at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival and the International Competition Best Director Award at the One World Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in Prague.

Earlier works include ‘Father and Daughter’ (2017) and ‘Way Back Home’ (2020). More recently, Sai’s short film ‘Being Ohnmar’ (2025) tells the story of a Burmese woman torn between caring for her sick mother and the opportunity to escape an oppressive dictatorship.

Alongside his career in film, Sai is a qualified medical doctor and has worked for several public health, children’s rights, and education NGOs.

In December 2024, Sai arrived in Sweden and began an ICORN residency in Västerås as the city’s first ICORN resident. Currently, he is working on different projects that reflect upon the themes of migration, displacement, identity, and ordinary lives caught in times of change.