It's a story of Cambodia but also of Southeast Asia: the new rich built on the back of rural labour, young men who leave their homes in the countryside to carry bricks and build real-estate edifices in the capital. The promise of the future is built on the uncertainty of the present.
In Phnom Penh, the place that perfectly symbolises this narrative is Koh Pich -- or Diamond Island -- a 2km-long patch of land that has witnessed a maddening concentration of mega construction projects, from apartment complexes to driving ranges, a new city hall and an international conference centre.
"It's a famous, iconic place representing Cambodia's modernisation," said filmmaker Davy Chou. "In terms of architecture, it's megalomaniac -- all these different styles of buildings in the same place. Koh Pich was a small island before it was extended into the river. Like Singapore's Sentosa, it shows us how to create something out of nothing."
Chou, a French-Cambodian director who's in town this week, has brought with him the film Diamond Island. In the story of teenagers working on Koh Pich, the image of Cambodia's towering ambitions is pitted against the everyday reality of small people toiling in the storm of dust at the bases of the sites. After a successful premier at the Cannes Film Festival last year, the film has emerged as a work of sensitive beauty that captures the street-level drama of contemporary Cambodia. It opens in limited Bangkok cinemas this week; Chou will also be present at the screening at Alliance Francaise on Witthayu Road tonight.
To Southeast Asian viewers, the story is authentic and familiar: Bora (non-professional Sobon Nuon) leaves his village to find work as a construction worker on Koh Pich, which translates Diamond Island. He lives in a zinc-roofed camp with other young workers, mostly in their teens, and soon reconnects with his runaway brother, who's now a cool, motorcycle-riding chap cruising the nocturnal streets of the district with his girlfriend.
Diamond Island is a broad look at the transformation of a society. But Chou is visibly more interested in the intimate, existential hope and despair of young Cambodians, and the film follows Bora and his friends as they hang out, sit around, chit-chat, court girls, or, on a lucky day, borrow someone's motorcycle so they can ride around with no worries.
"I wanted to make a film about contemporary Cambodia, especially the change in Phnom Penh and the relationship between youths and the modernisation of the city," said Chou, who divides his time between Paris and Phnom Penh. "I didn't have a plot or a clear idea. But when I went to Koh Pich in 2013, it was obvious that it would be the place for the film."
Davy Chou. HAL Distribution/ Davy Chou
Chou said he felt a strong attraction to the place during the daytime when it's full of construction activities and thousands of young workers building the Cambodia of the future -- the future that's still in progress and unfinished.
"But then I see the place at night with all the young people on hundreds of motorcycles who come out here," he continues. "It's a magical, mythical transformation. I talked to them and many of them come out to Koh Pich five times a week, just to hang out. Some of the construction workers would put on their best clothes and walk around, because they don't have motorcycles."
To the filmmaker, Koh Pich is a man-made symbol of the future, or at least the promise of what is to come. The young people who converge there without a clear purpose at night, Chou believes, are projecting themselves into something. "They're jumping into the image of the future," he said, the future of the country and of the world.
"I worked a lot on observation," he adds, "I spent all my evenings on Koh Pich taking notes and interviewing people. I spent months casting people on the street; we'd go to factories, garages and restaurants to find non-actors to play the characters. And I adapted the script to the reality of these real people."
Diamond Island is the second feature-length film by the 33-year-old filmmaker, a youthful man with small glasses and fashionably tousled hair. Chou comes from a family of Cambodian filmmakers who fled the Khmer Rouge for France in the 1970s. In 2012 he released the documentary Golden Slumbers, which revisits the glory days of Cambodian cinema in the golden era of the 50s and 60s. Working on that film reconnected Chou, who grew up in Paris, with the country of his ancestors, and he has been working out of both Paris and Phnom Penh for the past eight years.
On the surface, Diamond Island is the total opposite of Golden Slumbers, the new film a contemporary fiction while the other is a documentary about the past. For Chou, the two complement each other. In fact, he said, Diamond Island is almost a sequel to Golden Slumbers, despite the thematic differences.
"I believe they're so connected that they are two sides of the same coin," he said. "Golden Slumbers is about trying to film the present of the past -- I kept the camera in the present, and the film is very obsessed with the present images, like young people and new buildings. In short, we talk about the past by keeping our eyes on the present. In Diamond Island, I'm filming the present while trying to capture the sentiment of the future."
To understand the future, he adds, means to come to terms with the past. The most famous Cambodian filmmaker is the one who, like Chou's parents, fled Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge arrived flying the flag of totalitarianism. His name is Rithy Panh, a Paris-based director who has spent the past 20 years making documentaries on the haunting legacy of the Khmer Rouge. His films -- such as S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine; Duch, Master Of The Forges Of Hell; and The Missing Picture -- make up a near-definitive account of Cambodia's historical nightmare.
"If there hadn't been one filmmaker who spent 20 years exploring that history, I wouldn't have found the legitimacy to tell the story in Diamond Island. We have to look at the past before we move on to the future," said Chou.
"Somehow, it's true that the image of Cambodia is summarised by the Khmer Rouge, and maybe it's important to keep on doing that, because how can we ignore it? But the mission of cinema, I believe, is to displace some representations and propose others, in this case of Cambodia."
In the dusty Diamond Island, where young men still toil, that representation is urgent, realistic and relevant.
Diamond Island opens today at Lido, House RCA. The filmmaker will attend a screening at Alliance Francaise on Witthayu Road tonight at 7pm.
