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The White Building, an iconic structure home to 493 families in Phnom Penh, faces demolition. In the building’s final days, Kavich Neang follows three families, including his own, as they pack belongings, share memories and anxieties, and eventually move out before the building’s total destruction.Read More »
Director Rithy Panh turns his attention from Cambodia’s deadly past (last year’s S21: Khmer Rouge Killing Machine) to its uncertain present in this portrait of the legendary temples of Angkor and of the people paradoxically creating a future out of its ruins. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Angkor’s spectacular complexes provide a haunted stage for the laborers, peddlers, and holy men who exist within them. Workers piece together shards of statues and give voice to the stories carved upon the stones (if they can agree on what each image means, that is). Monks meditate in bullet-marked temples and narrate the histories of their gods. A farmer tours the murals with his fighting cock, revisiting the glories of old kings. For this “lost” city’s inhabitants, Angkor’s tales are never finished, its sculptures never silent. Intermingling their stories as subtly as a whisper, Panh creates a document of modern Cambodia, his camera carving out new legends with each story told.Read More »
Set in the newly-pacified Phnom Penh, Cambodia, this film is about the return to civilian life of Cambodian soldiers. Initially following three such returnees, the plot narrows to focus on Savannah (Narith Roeun), one ex-soldier trying to make sense of his new situation. He finds a home with his uncle, and they are the only remaining survivors of his once-large family. Despite its attraction and ubiquity, he decides not to turn to a life of petty crime, and instead tries to make his way as a kickboxer. Along the way he meets Srey Poeuv (Chea Lyda Chan), a 19 year-old bargirl who dreams of being rich and is ashamed of her status, in a dancehall. Initially, she resists his advances, but is swayed by the strength of his devotion and perseverance. His is the story of a damaged country trying vigorously to renew itself.Read More »
Three French journalists travel to Cambodia in 1978 after receiving an invitation from the Khmer Rouge regime, embarking on a perilous adventure.Read More »
The Missing Picture (French: L’image manquante) is a 2013 Cambodian-French documentary film directed by Rithy Panh about the Khmer Rouge. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival where it won the top prize. It was also screened in the World Cinema section at the 2013 Cinemanila International Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize.
The film has been selected as the Cambodian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards, and was nominated.Read More »
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A film about people who have survived the irradiation of war and is recommended to those who believe they are immune to it. An extreme, necessary film that penetrates the eye and heart with unyielding force.Read More »
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SAMNANG, 20, faces the demolition of his lifelong home in Phnom Penh and the pressures from family, friends, and neighbors which arise and intersect in this moment of sudden change.Read More »
A twenty-five-year-old French woman returns to Korea, the country she was born in before being adopted by a French couple, for the very first time. She decides to track down her biological parents, but her journey takes a surprising turn.Read More »
One of the rare Western films to take advantage of the spectacular setting of the temples at Angkor in Cambodia, L’Oiseau de Paradis is directed by Marcel Camus. The tale itself is relatively simple. A beautiful dancer has two admirers – one is a young worker whom she has only met by accident, and the other is an unscrupulous businessman. The worker had been training as a Buddhist monk and as his interest in the dancer and the businessman’s pursuit of the woman develop, the dancer and the former monk end up at the archaeological site of Angkor. There, Buddhists still worship in the temples and it is in this setting that the businessman kills them both. Reincarnation being accepted as truth in Cambodia, the story implies that the ill-fated young couple would be joined together in the future.Read More »