Cambodia | IIA | 2021
90’ | Drama
Subtitle: English
Theatre: M+ Cinema
Cast: Piseth Chhun, Hout Sithorn, Ok Sokha
Director Kavich Neang made his feature documentary debut in 2019 with “Last Night I Saw You Smiling”, which captured the final days of the White Building, an iconic apartment complex in Phnom Penh. Then, his first fictional feature “White Building” centers around Samnang, a twenty-year-old whose home is slated for demolition. The pressures from family, friends, and neighbors leave him at a crossroads that mirrors the fate of his country.
Kavich Neang (b. 1987, Phnom Penh, Cambodia) first got involved in filmmaking through the NGO Cambodian Living Arts and then joined a workshop at Bophana Center with Rithy Panh in 2011. In 2013, he joined Busan Film Festival’s Asian Film Academy in South Korea. In 2014, he co-founded the Cambodian film production company, Anti-Archive, alongside filmmakers Davy Chou and Steve Chen. He has directed five short films, and his full-length documentary Last Night I Saw You Smiling won awards in Rotterdam, Jeonju, Janela de Cinema do Recife, and Tokyo FilmEx, among others. His debut feature film White Building premiered in the Orizzonti section at the 2021 Venice Film Festival, where it won the prize for Best Actor, and it was also Cambodia’s official submission to the 2022 Academy Awards. He is now developing his next feature film.