Modernity comes like a promise, instead it turns into a flood.
In the mountains of northeastern Cambodia, a village called Kbal Romeas is slowly disappearing under the water of an electric dam. Houses, forests, and the collective memories were drawn beneath the water. The world calls it development. However, for those who lived there, it was the sound of a slowly sinking past.
Until the Orchid Blooms (2024), director Polen Ly highlights Kbal Romeas not to show what is lost, but to present what still survives. For six years, Ly followed Neang’s steps, a mother from Bunong tribe, who refuses to leave her village. She chooses to rebuild her life upon the land that is now forbidden, while the ground still calls the names of those who were born upon it.
The younger generation in the village gazed far beyond, to the promising land for a better future. However, mothers keep their heads down, cultivating, believing that the future can also grow from the same soil, as long as the roots remain unbroken. Between the two, there is an invisible distance: some of them want to run, while others wish to stay in a place they call “home”, a place that will never completely disappear. Ly’s camera lens appears to capture this distance. Instead of mediating the discrepancy, it accompanies the gap: hearing their breath, following their steps, holding onto a faithfulness that slowly transforms into resistance.
This documentary reveals how modernity often comes with abolition. The hydro-power dam is used as a symbol of “modernity”, but it is actually built on submerged history. Electricity may brighten the world and make our lives easier, but sadly, it also dims the existing flame: the bond between humans and the earth that once gave them life.
Behind the story of loss, Until the Orchid Blooms also portrays a love that continues to blossom amidst the sinking world. Neang, while her hands work the soil, her heart refuses to be silenced and give up. She represents Mother Earth: the woman who never stops giving life, even when life was taken from her. Her son and husband chose to leave the village to pursue a life that seems better, as modernity tries to offer. However, Neang chooses to stay, living in the same land, becomes a strong root, and insists that there is life that cannot be replaced by the promises of a new world. The way she survives shows us a simple yet profound truth: having a great love of “home” is another way to fight back. To love is to resist!
For Neang and all the souls who choose to survive, may your orchids bloom among the ruins that can grow love that slowly turns into resistance and sow unquenchable hope, even in a place full of mud. (Tirza Kanya) (Ed. Vanis/Trans. Shafira Rahmasari)
Film Details
Until the Orchid Blooms (Veasna Phka Prey)
Polen Ly | 103 min | 2024 | Cambodia
In Competition for International Feature-Length Documentary
Festival Film Dokumenter 2025
