Highlights of the Cambodia
IN SHEER size, variety and star power, little in the Kingdom compares to the Cambodia International Film Festival, now in its eighth year. Beginning on Tuesday, six days are packed with films from around the world. Filmmakers, actors and producers are flying in to attend screenings, give talks and generally soak in what Cambodia has to offer to the world of cinema.
With more than 100 films, it is impossible to provide a comprehensive “best of” guide but The Post has scoured the schedule to pick its highlights. Not included here, with some exceptions, is the astounding assortment of international films from all over the region, and beyond, which will be screening throughout the capital. For a full schedule, visit The Post’s website in the coming days. All showings are free, with a $1 charge for lastminute tickets. Stay tuned for more coverage of the festival throughout next week.
The festival is lucky to have not only Thai actor Vithaya Pansrigarm in the house for a selection of his films, but also Tom Waller, who directed The Last Executioner, in which Pansrigarm portrayed the last man to carry out executions by rifle in Thailand. With a martial arts pedigree dating back three decades, the 58-year-old came to the movie industry late but has made his mark on the international stage. He won best actor at the Shanghai Film Festival in 2014 for his role in The Last Executioner, playing rock ’n’ roller-turned-rifleman Chavoret Jaruboon.
Waller, who was born in Thailand, has said the film was an attempt to broaden the horizons of the Thai film industry beyond horror and comedy. They will both be at the screening of The Last Executioner on Tuesday evening, followed by Pansrigarm’s 2016 film The Forest.
The Last Executioner will play on Tuesday at Legend Cinema in Tuol Kork at 6:30pm, followed by The Forest at 8:45pm.
In many ways, 2016 and early 2017 was a breakout period for local cinema and last year’s festival was a chance to showcase that. This year has been a little calmer on the local movie front, but the festival will be showing five feature films produced recently in Cambodia, three of which have come out in the last year. One of festival director Cedric Eloy’s aims is to be accessible to all tastes, meaning there is little snobbery when it comes to genres. So for a glimpse at commercial Khmer cinema, there is Sdech Korn, a historical epic about the “usurper king”, who reigned for seven years beginning in 1498 and who is a figure of intense fascination for Prime Minister Hun Sen.
There will also be The Witch, a local horror film by Huy Yaleng in which a local tycoon’s seemingly benign wound grows into something much more ominous. There is also the French film The Path, shot in Cambodia, about a woman who joins a Catholic mission in northwestern Cambodia. Every morning, she crosses paths with a Khmer man named Sambath, and a relationship develops. Producer Catherine Dussart will attend the Cambodia premiere of the film on March 7 at Major Cineplex Sorya.
First They Killed My Father and Inside the Belly of a Dragon will also be screened at the festival.
As much as the festival is an opportunity to show local films to an international audience, it is also an occasion for some of the huge diaspora community to convene in Cambodia. Every year, Cedric Eloy says, there is at least one film from a director in the diaspora exploring ties to either their birth country or the former home of their parents. This year, there are three films exploring these themes, including The First Generation – Memoirs of Cambodia by Kemara and Abraham Pol, which is an oral history project about five people now living in Austria who fled the Khmer Rouge regime.
The filmmakers will be present for the screening, which will be the film’s Cambodia premiere. There will also be two documentaries with remarkably similar themes from diaspora directors continents apart. FrenchCambodian filmmaker Neary Adeline Hay’s Angkar was inspired by her lack of understanding about the experiences of her parents under the Khmer Rouge. In the documentary, her father returns to Cambodia for the first time to face his past. Meanwhile, the short documentary film A Life Like This, by New Zealand director Isaiah Tour, shows the director trying to get closer to his father by making a film about him – an attempt to unpack the details of his refugee story.
A Life Like This and The First Generation – Memoirs of Cambodia will be screening at the French Institute at 1:30pm on Sunday, March 11. Angkar will be screening at multiple locations throughout the festival.
In the 1960s, Cambodian director Ly Bun Yim revolutionised the country’s silver screen by putting special effects into The Twelve Sisters, a movie based on a well-known Khmer folktale about 12 sisters who suffer hardship because of the sins of a previous life.
Yim’s production surprised viewers by featuring effects like a mythical Pegasus and bloody scenes of violence. Now 86, he is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, but he still remembers his glory days.
“Tens of thousands of people were watching the films, and it was even screened abroad,” he said this week at his house in Takhmao.
In a special tribute to the filmmaker, a selection of Bun Yim’s movies will be showing at the festival, including a never-before-seen remastered version of The Twelve Sisters.
His other films Sobasith, a classic love story that was the debut of actress Virak Dara, and Orn Euy Srey Orn – based on a legend about marriage – will also be screened.
The remastered version of 12 Sisters, in Khmer with English subtitles, will be screened at Chaktomuk Theatre on Wednesday evening at 6:30pm, with Bun Yim in attendance.
This year’s festival has a full slate of Cambodia-related documentaries, with the highlight being the world premiere of Surviving Bokator, a film seven years in the making about Cambodia’s ancient martial arts tradition. The film focuses mostly on Grandmaster San Kim Sean, the renowned L’Bokator practitioner who, since surviving the Khmer Rouge, has devoted his life to reviving the artform. There will also be another film on a similar topic – namely the survival of ancient traditions through the sheer devotion of certain individuals. Cambodian Textiles by Tatsuhito Utagawa looks at the work of Kikuo Morimoto, who set up an institute to promote Khmer silk weaving. The film is an intimate portrait of the man as he faces terminal cancer, which ultimately led to his passing last year. The Thursday screening at Aeon Mall will be its Cambodian premiere.
The film Until They’re Gone will also be making its local premiere on Wednesday evening at the French Institute after its 2016 release. The documentary is about a California couple who leave their comfortable suburban life to found an organisation to combat the effects of landmines.