Le Vénérable W. plunges us into heart of Burmese society where racism, islamophobia and hate speech reigns over a population that is 90% Buddhist, a religion that is, however, based on a way of life that is pacifist, tolerant and non-violent.
In the same vein as Général Idi Amin Dada, which presents a portrait of the Ugandan dictator and The Terror's Advocate, a film about Jacques Verges, Le Vénérable W. deals with the question of a possible genocide, the first of the 21st century, through the character of Wirathu, a highly influential Buddhist monk. All these projects share the same starting point: "it's about meeting people, and encouraging them to talk without judging them, people through whom evil becomes embodied in differents faces and then bit by bit letting horror and truth take hold", explains Barbet Schroeder. The filmmaker has also used the points of view of two Buddhist monks from the same generation as Wirathu, imprisoned several times, opposed to his ideology and whose testimonies reveal the monk's concealed and calculated excesses.
