Debut director hopes heist comedy "Gems" will be a hit

As children in the late ’90s, three friends Rith, Sovan and Dara promised one another that they’d grow old together, working at a restaurant on the beach. But circumstances have separated them, and 15 years later, Dara’s death brings Rith (played by Cheky Athiporn), now a police officer, and Sovan (Vandy Piseth), a gangster, together again. They are travelling through southern Cambodia, and Sovan is carrying $3 million worth of diamonds – without Rith’s knowledge.

That’s the premise of Kroab Pich, or Gems on the Run in English – a new Cambodian feature film co-directed by Sok Visal and Quentin Clausin that will premiere at the Cambodia International Film Festival (CIFF) this evening.

In an interview last week, the director said the film, a comedy, was also concerned with social and class relationships.

Visal said: “It’s a film about friendship, and about how everybody is born into different social situations. We have these three friends: One is a rich kid with a powerful father; another kid whose father is an abusive alcoholic so he’s a bit of a rascal – and the other kid, the one who dies, was like the mediator between them, trying to make peace.”

The film was shot in Cambodia, and its cast and crew are all Cambodian.

Visal said: “I wanted to make something for the local Cambodian market – something entertaining with a little bit of a moral about friendship. Also it’s about people who were born into different social classes but who managed to live together and understand one another.”

While Visal has directed music videos and TV commercials before, this is his first feature film. After his role as first assistant director on Clausin’s film Comfortably Lost two years ago, the two decided to co-direct a film together.

Visal, who is also a music producer, praised the recent revival of Cambodia’s film industry, explaining how before movie theatres such as Cineplex and Legend came to Phnom Penh, few films were made because demand was so low. But now they’ve arrived, the industry has been given a new lease of life.

He continued: “Local kids and young people are eager to watch Khmer movies – not all of them understand English, not all of them want to read subtitles. They want to watch movies they can relate to: Khmer actors, Khmer production, stories and so on.”

CIFF, which runs until tomorrow at various venues in Phnom Penh, aims to promote Cambodian cinema. Visal said: “I think the festival is beneficial for the film industry and for the community in general, and it will attract more and more people every year if it’s done right.”

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Lost Loves director behind first Singaporean-Cambodian film

After his success with Lost Loves, Cambodia’s first entry to the Oscars in almost two decades, trailblazing filmmaker Chhay Bora is making the Kingdom’s first Singaporean-Cambodian co-production – a gritty thriller scheduled for release next summer.

Set against the backdrop of Phnom Penh’s sex trafficking industry, the feature film, called 3.50, is a hopeful story created by Singapore-Cambodia’s first film co-production team, with Cambodia’s Chhay Bora and Singapore’s Eysham Ali co-directing for the first time.

The film, which is being shot in Phnom Penh, tells the story of an American documentary filmmaker, played by Singaporean actress and producer Eunice Olsen, who forages into Cambodia’s underground sex industry to save a girl who was kidnapped from her village and sold into prostitution.

Bora said he was inspired to tackle the topic of human trafficking and child prostitution in 3.50 because, despite high-profile arrests, the public still need to be educated about the severity of the dangers and human rights violations involved in the sex industry. “It is not enough if we do not educate people to understand,” he said.

A former Miss Universe Singapore, Olsen first became aware of Cambodia’s seedy sex industry when she met a sex trade survivor as part of her work as UN’s Goodwill Ambassador in 2005.

She and co-producer Chan Gin Kai approached Bora in August to express an interest in producing a movie in Cambodia.

According to Kai it was important for the team to produce a film that not only told a compelling Southeast Asian story, but could also strengthen Cambodian-Singaporean ties.

During pre-production, the Singapore team conducted open acting and filmmaking workshops to train the Cambodian crew and transfer key skills to them in an effort to enhance the Cambodian film industry.

Cultural differences caused struggles between the directors over decision-making, according to Bora, who added that he had great respect for co-director Ali, as well as Olsen.

"With two different directors from two different countries, we have our own knowledge, [and] sometimes [we] have to struggle to find one decision. But so far we have done well," he said.

Shooting for the film, which began at the end of November, is scheduled to finish before the end of the year.

Filmmakers hope to have 3.50 in cinemas by mid-2013.

It will be the second feature film for Bora, whose first, Lost Loves, became Cambodia's first entry to the Oscars in 18 years in August when the Cambodian Oscars Selection Committee (COSC) unanimously voted to propose it.

The film, a tale of a woman’s hardship during the Khmer Rouge regime, will be Cambodia’s official Oscar entry for Best Foreign Film at the 2013 Academy Awards.

“It was so heartfelt it moves you,” said Mariam Arthur, head of COSC, “It is very emotional. Bora was able to capture the drama of the human emotion.”

Arthur said she hopes that Bora’s works can serve as inspiration for “a new generation of filmmakers to start experimenting and making their own creations,” and further develop the industry in Cambodia.

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"The Missing Picture" moves a step closer to the Oscars

Cambodian-French director Rithy Panh’s film The Missing Picture has moved a step closer to an Academy Award after being named as one of the final nine foreign language films in the competition.

The films announced on Friday were whittled down from a list of 76 revealed in October by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which organises Hollywood’s biggest annual awards ceremony.

They will be reduced to five nominees next month, before nods in all Oscar categories are announced on January 16. The 86th Academy Awards will be held on March 2.

Panh told The Phnom Penh Post that being among the final nine was a significant achievement.

“If it can go on to be nominated, if we are lucky enough to be nominated, it’s better – but at this stage it’s already very, very good,” Panh said.

He said the film’s success had already thrown a spotlight on the Cambodian industry and shown it was capable of cooperating with international production companies.

“It’s important to open the country like this and cooperate with other production [companies],” he said. “Cambodia is a small country. It’s not really a big market. If you want to move [to the next level] you have to cooperate with other countries.”

The Missing Picture, which explores Panh’s experiences and memories of the Khmer Rouge period using miniature clay figures against stylised backdrops and archive footage, has already received one of film’s highest plaudits, winning the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes this year.

Panh is set to begin work with French director Regis Wargnier on the French-Cambodian co-production of The Gate next year after the two countries signed an agreement on cooperation. The film will be a dramatisation of the memoirs of French ethnologist Francois Bizot, who spent three months in a Khmer Rouge prison camp.

Cedric Eloy, chief executive at the Cambodian Film Commission, said the shortlisting of a Cambodian film for an Oscar showed recognition of the country’s capacity to produce films universal and accessible enough to be received positively worldwide.

“It’s very encouraging for future projects,” Eloy said.

He added that the Cambodian industry was developing positively “step by step” with more films being made, more questions asked about Cambodia and more contact with foreign producers.

“I’m sure if The Missing Picture gets the Oscar it will give [the local industry] a big push,” he said. “So of course we cross the fingers … but there are a lot of good films that are competing.”

The shortlist announced on Friday offered some unexpected snubs. Left out were highly-touted films such as Saudi Arabia’s first candidate ever, Wadjda by Haifaa al-Mansour, and Pakistan’s first entry in five decades, Zinda Bhaag.

Only two other Cambodian films have ever been submitted to the Academy Awards for consideration. Chhay Bora’s 2010 film Lost Loves, a love story set during the time of the Khmer Rouge, was submitted in 2012 but did not make the final shortlist. Panh’s 1994 drama The Rice People was also submitted.

The other films on this year’s shortlist are: The Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium), An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker (Bosnia and Herzegovina), The Hunt (Denmark), Two Lives (Germany), The Grandmaster (Hong Kong), The Notebook (Hungary), The Great Beauty (Italy) and Omar (Palestine).

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Countdown to the Oscars: the contenders in review

Director Rithy Panh is taking Cambodia to the Oscars for the first time. The Missing Picture, which tells the story of the Khmer Rouge regime using clay figurines, has been nominated for best foreign language film. The rival entries are offerings from Italy, Belgium, Denmark and Palestine. In the weeks leading up to the ceremony on March 2, we will look at each rival in turn and assess its chances of taking home the gong. This week, Poppy McPherson reviews Italy’s entry, The Great Beauty.

At the start of Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza), a Japanese tourist snaps a picture of the Roman skyline on a glorious morning. Then he dies. Whether it’s from fatigue or some kind of aesthetic meltdown is left up to the viewer.

The film then prances into a dizzying whirl through the parties, passions and hideous pretensions of modern Rome as seen through the eyes of ageing hero Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo).

A 65-year-old journalist, Jep wears sharp suits and a cartoonish mask of melancholy as he reflects on his life at the vortex of the city’s upper class social scene. Even the benches he sits on are made from Italian marble. Jep is set up to mirror Rome itself, the seat of an empire fallen into debauched but joyful excess, as is made clear early on, at his Eurotrashy birthday party: an obese, painfully botoxed woman bursts out of a cream cake crying “Happy Birthday Rome”, prompting onlookers to deride her as Lorena, the formerly successful TV presenter “now in complete mental and physical decline”. So too is the collection of Jeps’ reluctantly ageing friends for whom he hosts Bacchanalian parties. “We are all on the brink of despair,” Jep reflects in typically Chekhovian fashion.

Filmmaker Sorrentino (Il Divo) equally mocks and revels in the pretensions of the social circle, which draws in the city’s religious leaders. In a nightmarish sequence, a botox technician is worshipped like a tribal god. A cardinal dishes out cooking tips like Hail Marys. Hilarity ensues when a 104-year-old female saint arrives on the scene, a sequence which culminates in a group of partygoers searching for the decrepit woman when she disappears after dinner: “Where did that bitch get to?”

But for all the humour, there are moments of exquisite pathos: a coked-up Lorena is seen alone at the end of a party gasping as a drop of blood runs from her nostril. A child coerced into performance art by her parents screams as she throws paint on the canvas. Jep’s lover Romana, a stripper newly enfolded into the lives of the rich and fabulous, leaves in disgust. “That girl was crying,” she says. “That girl earns millions,” Gambardella deadpans.

Beautiful even when it’s ugly, but best when it’s sumptuous, the film delights in languorous shots of the cityscape: the sun sets over the Colosseum and glints off the Tiber. One night, Jep and Romana are given the keys to one of Rome’s most beloved buildings, and wander through halls of ancient sculptures. Italy’s extraordinary history is one of the great beauties of the film, alongside sex and an enchanting opera soundtrack. The message is clear. This is Rome: sometimes revolting, always intoxicating, and resolutely one of the world’s greatest cities.

Verdict: Tipped to be the front-runner. Sorrentino practices a visual artistry that is unequalled among the nominees. The soundtrack, too, is masterful. It’s no surprise he took home the Golden Globe for best foreign language film earlier this month, often an indication of Oscar-winners. The film comes at a time when Italy’s political life has never seemed more ugly, so a successor toLa Dolce Vita to remind everyone of its glory may seem prudent. But this is cinema for cinema’s sake – a serious subject matter like Panh’s might just edge it out.

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