Neang is an indigenous Bunon single mother of four living in northeastern Cambodia. Her village, home, and forest have been flooded by a hydroelectric dam near the Mekong river. After escaping the flood on the mainland, industrialists collude with the government to pressure her family and community to leave their ancestral land. Neang fights with her community to preserve their remaining ancestral landscape and the unity of her community and family, even as her children’s dreams veer further from traditional ways of life.
Polen Ly
Polen Ly is a Cambodian medical student-turned-filmmaker whose socially conscious works touch on human rights and nature. His short film, Side by Side (2021), won the Youth Jury Prize in Locarno Open Doors. His follow-up, Further and Further Away (2022), bagged Best Performance for actor Bopha Oul at the 33rd SGIFF.
Lucas Sénécaut
Lucas Sénécaut is a director, author, and producer who studied film and production in his hometown of Montpellier. He later worked at the Bophana Center in Cambodia, founded by filmmaker Rithy Panh. In 2022, he moved to Toulouse and co-founded L’Oeil Vif Productions, where he has produced or co-produced several fiction and documentary films.
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…
