Feature film
Rice People
អ្នកស្រែ
Rithy Panh · 1994
Synopsis
In a Cambodian village after the Khmer Rouge, Vong Poeuv, his wife Yim Om and their seven daughters live to the rhythm of the family rice field, awaiting a single harvest. The father fears the plot will shrink and that he will not be able to get enough rice to feed his family; the mother, for her part, worries about her husband. Her fears take shape when Poeuv hurts his foot on a poisoned thorn and stays in bed for a long time, while the work of the fields cannot wait.
Context
The film adapts a 1966 Malaysian novel, Ranjau Sepanjang Jalan by Shahnon Ahmad, set in the state of Kedah, transposed to Cambodia after 1979 in a screenplay written with Ève Deboise. The idea is said to have come to the director in 1989, when children born in a refugee camp answered him that rice came from the UN trucks. Shot in the village of Kamreang, in Kandal province, on the banks of the Mekong, with professional and amateur actors, including Peng Phan as the mother, it was photographed by Jacques Bouquin and edited by Andrée Davanture; it runs two hours five minutes.
Who it is for
For those who like slow cinema, attentive to work on the land and to the gestures of a peasant family.
Prizes and reception
The first Cambodian film in competition at Cannes, in 1994, and the first submitted by the country for the Academy Awards, it also received a Best Actress award in Singapore.