Les Films du Losange has announced the French release of the film WHITE BUILDING, directed by Cambodian Kavich Neang, on December 22. It is co-produced by Davy Chou, himself a Franco-Cambodian director (Diamond Island, Le Sommeil d'or).
White Building tells the story of 20-year-old Samnang, who lives in a historic building in Phnom Penh. He faces the departure of his best friend, the illness of his father and the imminent demolition of his lifelong home; pressures which all arise and intersect at this moment of sudden change. Piseth Chhun, the main actor, won the Orizzonti Award for Best Actor for his role as Samnang at the 78th Venice Film Festival this year.
A sensual and scintillating ode to youth, the film also addresses the issues of the transmission of culture, globalization and the transformation of the Asian continent.
With five short films under his belt since 2011, White Building is director Kavich Neang's first feature film. In an interview with Eléonore Sok-Halkovich, he described growing up in Phnom Penh, the transformation of the city and the history behind the iconic White Building which was home to over 400 families: “[It] was a large apartment building designed in 1963 by Cambodian architect Lu Ban Hap and Franco-Ukrainian Vladimir Bodiansky, according to urban renovation plans conceived by modernizer Vann Molyvann back in the days of King Sihanouk. As a state-owned building in the heart of the city, it was intended for Ministry of Culture civil servants. It was emptied during the rule of the Khmer Rouge and then, in the 1980s, it was re-inhabited by people like my father, a sculptor. Badly maintained, it aged quickly. By the early 2000s, it had earned a bad reputation, as drug dealers and prostitutes moved in. I grew up with them as my neighbours. Rumors of imminent demolition had been circulating for years. In 2014, we heard that the government planned to knock down the White Building and redevelop the area, by selling the land to a Japanese company that was willing to pay top dollar. They offered apartment owners financial compensation, which is rarely the case in property conflicts, or there was an option for residents to be rehoused in the new high-rise building that was being planned. The residents took the money and moved out. Leaving was heartbreaking. We were all deeply attached to the building, but we had no choice. “The Building,” as we all called it, was knocked down in 2017. And in 2019, news went around that the land had been sold to a Hong Kong company that plans to build a casino.”
The film is also a deeply personal story for Neang who based the film's characters on himself (where Samnang is his alter ego) and his parents, as well as their experiences with the demolition of the building and the evacuation of its residents. With the White Building featured in his 2019 documentary, Last Night I Saw You Smiling, Neang acknowledged the documentary's influence on the film and explained his approach: “In the documentary, I felt passive with regard to the evacuation of the apartment where I lived with my parents, powerless to fight overwhelming forces. Whereas in the feature, I was able to reimagine those forces, create coherent characters and, in a way, fight despair and forgetting, in order to question audiences and provoke debate.”
Synopsis
20-year-old Samnang and two of his friends live in the White Building, a landmark tenement in Phnom Penh. In this fast-changing city, the three boys practice their dance routine dreaming of television talent contests while their parents lead a more traditional lifestyle. But the White Building is to be demolished. Samnang observes his father unsuccessfully attempting to bring together his divided neighbours on the government's compensation offers for residents to move out, and he must face his best friend's departure from Cambodia. Samnang finds that the stable environment he has always called home is on shaky ground.
Cast & Crew
Written by: Kavich Neang and Daniel Mattes
Cinematography: Douglas Seok
Cast: Piseth Chhun, Sithan Hout, Sokha Uk, Chinnaro Soem, Sovann Tho, Jany Min and Chandalin Y
