The film focuses on Suu Kyi’s relationship with her British husband Michael Aris after Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988 to care for her ailing mother, leaving Aris and their two sons, Alexander and Kim at home in Oxford. 

Suu Kyi was soon plunged into the country’s democracy uprising and became general-secretary of the National League for Democracy which gained more than 80 per cent of the vote in the 1990 general election. The military disregarded the public vote, however, and refused to hand over power.

When Suu Kyi was first placed under house arrest in 1990––she would spend most of the next two decades under house arrest––and did not her husband again. After being diagnosed with prostrate cancer in 1997, Aris was refused a visa to enter Burma, despite pleas to the military junta from the then UN Secretary-General and Pope John Paul II. He later died in England in 1999, without having seen Suu Kyi again.

Filming of ‘The Lady’ took place in England, France, Thailand and Burma. Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh portrays Suu Kyi, and British actor David Thewlis plays Aris.

Yeoh visited Suu Kyi just one month after her release from house arrest last year in December 2010. She attempted another visit in June this year but was deported immediately.

Yeoh told The Hollywood Reporter that it was the Burmese government that alerted the media to her deportation and that, “It (also) showed how irrational and erratic they [Burma’s military government] are.”

She said, “I will be back. I will go to that country.”