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Land of Wandering Souls
Thursday, August 1, 2002
"Land of Wandering Souls" follows a group of workers who are laying a high-tech fiber optic cable that will link Cambodia to the rest of Asia and Europe. The project is a hopeful symbol of the country's slow integration into the world community and the modern technological age. However, for the people employed to actually dig the trench by hand -- a group of rice farmers, ex-soldiers, and their families, the poorest of the poor -- the work is a mixed blessing. This film provides a haunting glimpse into the lives of these indigent workers as they encounter the painful remnants of the past - mines, bones, and a landscaped littered with human suffering - and labor to bring Cambodia into the modern age.
 Watch a preview video
Director Rithy Panh was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 1964. He was 11 when the Khmer Rouge "evacuated" his family to the countryside, where they were forced to work as laborers. Although Panh managed to escape to France at the age of 15, most of his family, including his parents and his sisters, died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. During the last ten years, he has made nine films. "If we do not do this work now," Panh asks, "who will do it? History will restore that which the Khmer Rouge have killed, but how? The worst is not the millions of dead, of widows, of orphans, of mutilated people, it's also our broken identity, our ruined social unity, our stolen memory."
Photos: AP
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