Cannes Film Festival hosts portrait of Ashin Wirathu, the firebrand Buddhist monk who preaches hard line against Rohingya

Taken on face value, Barbet Schroeder’s latest documentary appears to be about social problems unfolding far away from the Cannes Film Festival, where his feature premiered on Saturday.

The Venerable W revolves around Ashin Wirathu, the leader of Myanmar’s hardline anti-Muslim Buddhist organisation Ma Ba Tha. Splicing existing footage with new material Schroeder shot in Myanmar – including, of course, interviews with the monk himself – the film is a searing portrait of the man labelled “The Face of Buddhist Terror” in a cover feature in Time magazine in July 2013.

Schroeder said his film is just as relevant to audiences in France, however.

“I’d like to show the movie to the people of Marine Le Pen,” he said, referring to the far-right French politician who managed to secure 34 per cent of the vote in France’s presidential elections on May 7.

Speaking to the South China Morning Post, the 74-year-old Tehran-born, Paris-based German-Swiss filmmaker said Wirathu’s rhetoric features “exactly the same things” as Le Pen’s.

“Nationalism, populism and Islamophobia – there are many axes of evil around the world where you have all these irrational fears which could be proven wrong at the start, but the people don’t want to hear,” he said.

Wirathu’s fiery anti-Muslim views have been condemned by many who blame them for contributing to deadly riots across Myanmar’s southwestern Rakhine state. The monk and his followers have also been vocal in supporting legislation which would strip Muslim Rohingyas – 5 per cent of Myanmar’s population – of their citizenship.