CIFF 360 : A Rare Screening of Cambodian Cinema Pioneer Uong Kan Thouk's The Time to Cry at Kep

Thursday afternoon, around fifty spectators gathered at Kep West, in the premises of the former Sailin Club, as part of CIFF 360 for a rare and precious screening: The Time to Cry (Pel Del Trov Zum), directed by Uong Kan Thouk, one of the pioneering figures of Cambodian cinema in the 1970s.

Among the audience were children from the Kep Educational Center, accompanied by Matthieu Majoli, co-president of the association. Their presence gave the screening a special dimension—that of a heritage passed on, a memory transmitted from one generation to the next.

An Extraordinary Filmmaker

In a field that was almost exclusively male, Uong Kan Thouk established herself as one of the very rare women to direct films during the golden age of Khmer cinema. A flourishing and creative era, tragically interrupted by the Khmer Rouge's rise to power in 1975, who destroyed much of this cinematic heritage and assassinated many of its artists.

A Melodrama Behind the Scenes of Cinema

Pel Del Trov Zum features the star couple Kong Som Oeun and Vichara Dany in the roles of Vichet and Vichara, two lovers with a thwarted fate. Vichara is forced to marry a rich man to pay off her mother and sister's debts. Desperate, Vichet then decides to marry Monida, the daughter of a director and friend of Vichara. A series of twists ultimately leaves Vichet widowed and Vichara heartbroken. The two reunite on a film set to play a love story that echoes their own.

This reflexive framework—a film within a film—is one of the singularities of Uong Kan Thouk's work. The characters play actors evolving in an industry tainted by nepotism and corruption. The music is by the legendary Sinn Sisamouth, whose voice remains one of the most emblematic of 20th-century Cambodia.

A Dance on a Volcano

The film was shot while American bombs were already falling on Cambodian territory. One can't help but see in this Phnom Penh bourgeoisie that fusses, loves, and tears itself apart in its plush salons, the testimony of a society on the brink of the abyss. The Time to Cry is much more than a simple melodrama: it's the portrait of a world on the verge of disappearing.

A Survivor Film, a Living Work

The film was discovered by Davy Chou—co-founder of Anti-Archive and director of Return to Seoul—in the personal collection of cinephile Vathana Huy, during research for Golden Slumbers, his 2011 documentary on the golden age of Cambodian cinema. The poor quality of the available copy suggests it was likely duplicated from a compressed video CD, itself recorded from VHS tapes, which were taken from damaged 16 mm reels. Scenes are missing, including the precise moment of the protagonists' reunion. In a rare 2021 interview, Uong confided: "It hurts to see these images with missing scenes. I actually prefer not to watch them at all."

Yet, in Kep this Thursday, the film truly came alive. Amid the laughter and attentive silences of around fifty spectators—including these children from the Kep Educational Center who may have been discovering this chapter of their own history for the first time—this incomplete melodrama proved that some works resist time, regimes, and destruction.

A Well-Deserved Tribute

This screening is part of a broader homage paid by CIFF to Uong Kan Thouk's work, with three of her films presented this year at the Bophana Center in Phnom Penh: Time to Cry, Muoy Meun Alay (1970), and Thavary Meas Bang (1969). The director's granddaughter, Ambre Rama, participated in the festival. A late but welcome recognition for a filmmaker too long forgotten—and, this Thursday in Kep, a film that found its audience, from the oldest to the youngest.

More photographs here...