A River Changes Course

Center for Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award 2013

NEW DOCS

How is land most valuable, as a renewable or commoditized resource? How is ownership determined? Who decides? Is convenience progress? Families scavenge for wild potatoes in a deforested landscape, fishing farther and farther from home as the river seems empty, bringing in a back-breaking rice harvest that doesn’t cover their debts. Musing on what comes next, and how to get there, it seems that there are only questions. Is an eldest child’s service to the family sacrifice, or an opportunity for autonomy? How important is education and how is its value quantified? The Tonle Sap River changes course twice a year, but when a family leaves its traditional path, will it still know how to be a family? A beautiful and heartbreaking verité look at three families subsisting in (what may be the end of) rural Cambodia.  CRE

Director

Kalyanee Mam

Producers

Kalyanee Mam, Ratanak Leng, Youk Chhang

Editor

Chris Brown

Cinematographer

Kalyanee Mam

Release Year

2012

Festival Year

2013

Country

Cambodia, United States

Run Time

83 minutes