Anti-Archive

A young woman relaxes at a riverfront restaurant. She recounts stories of her past experiences, finding enchantment in the flows of the river and the trees on the mountains nearby.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia. On Diamond Island, the country's pinnacle of modernity, two friends tell each other about the dreams they had the night before.

Japan, 1944. Trained for intelligence work, Hiroo Onoda, 22 years old, discovers a philosophy contrary to the official line: no suicide; stay alive whatever happens; the mission is more important than anything else. Sent to Lubang, a small island in the Philippines where the Americans are about to land, this role will be to wage a guerrilla war until the return of the Japanese troops. The Empire will surrender soon after; Onoda, 10,000 days later.

Forty years after the fall of Phnom Penh, Cambodian artists inherit a pluralistic history whose groping threads they unravel. Sera Ing works on the sculpture which will become the first memorial of the genocide but the project encounters difficulties to exist. How do artists reappropriate history and culture from which they have been dispossessed?

After an impulsive travel decision to visit friends, Freddie, 25, returns to South Korea for the first time, where she was born before being adopted and raised in France. Freddie suddenly finds herself embarking on an unexpected journey in a country she knows so little about, taking her life in new and unexpected directions.

Lida, a careerdriven woman in her late 20s in the developing metropolis of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, sells modern and upscale real estate developments to the growing middle and upper class in contemporary Cambodia. Lida may be thriving as a top real estate agent, but in her personal life , her relationship with her photographer boyfriend is deteriorating. Unable to escape the trauma and prison of her interior monologue, she travels to the quiet beach town of Kep, Cambodia, with her close companions. While the growth and modernization of the city promote an urban and cultural erasure, Kep reveals treasures from Cambodia’s heritage. It is there that Lida discovers that the specters from the past haunt in sublime and beautiful ways.

Sleepless from the heat, Sokun leaves his crowded construction dormitory and joins a community of fellow workers living in one of many unfinished high-rises. One such tower becomes the long-awaited luxury home for its first tenant, Seda, who soon feels trapped in the vast gated complex.

Samnang, 20, faces the demolition of his lifelong home in Phnom Penh and the pressures from family, friends, and neighbors which arise and intersect in this moment of sudden change.

Bora, an 18-year-old, leaves his village to work on the construction sites of Diamond Island, a project for an ultra-modern paradise for the rich and a symbol of tomorrow’s Cambodia. He befriends his fellow workers and finds his elder brother, the charismatic Solei, who went missing five years earlier. Solei introduces him into an exciting world, that of an urban and wealthy youth, its girls, nights and illusions.

My mother always refused to speak about her childhood during the Cambodian genocide. Upset by her silence, my brother and I decide to follow Antoine, a grandson of Armenian genocide survivors, photographing the ghosts of his ancestors in the Middle East.

Kavich Neang documents the final days of the White Building in Phnom Penh, an architectural landmark he had lived in since birth.

During her chaotic family’s Qingming visit, dead Grandma Nai sneaks away from her peaceful afterlife after overhearing that her queer grandson is about to get engaged to a woman.

A young woman working late at night at a beauty salon gives into her restrained interest in a young man who spends his evenings driving Phnom Penh's streets by motorbike as a delivery man.

Thida, the spirit guardian of an old cinema facing demolition, must confront her existence as a ghost and the choice of rebirth. When she meets Hai, a living human with whom she forms a deep bond, their connection forces her to face not only her spiritual destiny but also the realities of a country undergoing profound economic and social change.

Two women of different backgrounds encounter one another at an oceanfront resort. They then discover a hidden bond that allows them to escape from their realities.

Years ago, a helicopter crashed under mysterious circumstances high in the mountains. Climbing the slopes to investigate the accident, a journalist and a soldier encounter a shaman deep in the forest who tells them about ancient rain rituals.

On the Cambodian island of Koh Sdach, a local diver examines coral reefs and seahorse populations while exploring the environmental impacts of his village's commercial development and growing fishing industry.

Sorn, an ethnic Shan sex worker, tries to build a future in Chiang Mai, Thailand, as a refugee far from home, but he is drawn into a complex relationship with one client, an investigator probing a political activist.

On a Cambodian fishing island, Mera is turning 18. She rejects a marriage arranged by her aunt and instead organizes a trip with her close friend Bopha to a remote rocky island to visit a soldier who she met online. Weeks later, Mera vanishes. Bopha’s search begins. As the weeks pass without resolution, Bopha starts to understand the inner secrets and hidden desires of her missing friend, and her own.

Phnom Penh at night. Three young hip-hop dancers drive a single motorbike and stop on a muddy deserted road. Nick leaves the others to look for an iPhone he heard was lost in the area. Piseth and Thy discuss their hopes and doubts, and Piseth shows his best Michael Jackson moves. They meet Leakhena, a young female street vendor whose cart is full of colors.