Personal debt in Cambodia is out of control. The average Cambodian family owes more to microfinance institutions than in any other country in the world, with many loans issued to cover basic living expenses rather than investments – and with interest, this piles up to figures that massively outstrip any future ability to repay. The crisis has seen rural communities forced to sell farmland and homes at a frightening rate, driving an influx of young workers to urban areas, where living costs is high, income streams can be erratic, and few have any hope of owning their own home.
This week, as part of the Cambodian International Film Festival two excellent short films set 600 years apart tackle this perennial problems of debt – and how it’s often the daughters of those who get in over their heads that pay the price.
The first is Chosen, co-directed by Daniel David Newman and Soriya Khorn (who also stars) – a tense, skilfully acted and directed drama set in in the early 1400s, during the reign of King Reamithibei, the last of the Angkor rulers. The film portrays Chantrea, a timid teenage girl preparing to leave her family’s simple farmhouse to be delivered to a powerful figure, the exchange brokered by a string of men who should be her protectors – including her father, whose guilt and shame transmutes into callousness towards her instead.
This is a world where women indirectly cajole and comfort themselves and each other into accepting the inevitable, and the economical script is assured enough to allow the unsaid to hang heavy in the silence – Meas Dalin, shines as Chantrea’s heartbroken mother, fighting to stay composes as she contemplates the future that awaits her little girl. As Chantrea’s world closes in from the pastoral expanse of her childhood home to the vicious, pitch-dark world inside the palace cloisters, we feel suffocated along with her. A true-life twist rescues the ending from total despair, but the film’s naturalness and contemporary tone – you never feel you are watching a period piece – serves a reminder that, for many of Cambodia’s daughters, nightmares like Chantrea’s remain a daily reality.
That is brought sharply into focus in The Debt Diaries, written and directed by Charles Garrett, and starring Chakriya Pich and Porn Um as a daughter and mother set to lose everything as their debts spiral out of control. Nit, the daughter, is determined to save the family home and farmland, raging first at the debt collectors who arrive at night to drag away their cows – and then, as she learns the true extent of their money troubles, at her passive, increasingly withdrawn mother, who can barely bring herself to look at the paperwork piling up from the bank and predatory loan sharks charging exorbitant interest that she turned to when she couldn’t make repayments. “We just need to beg them and maybe they’ll understand,” she says helplessly, as Nit, already working multiple jobs in the city to dig them out of the hole, tries to drive home just how catastrophic their situation has become.
The strong cast, natural dialogue, and perfectly judged balance of emotional restraint and simmering anger build to an understated but poignant conclusion that should leave you as furious over Cambodia’s blood-sucking microfinance industry as it does Nit, the film’s level-headed but overwhelmed heroine.
The Cambodia International Film Festival runs from 25-30 June 2024. Chosen and the The Debt Diaries will screen at 6pm on Thursday 27th at Legend Premium Exchange Square & 3pm on Saturday 29th at The Rosewood Hotel.