Cannes marks a passing of the torch

[geovalin]

Clarence Tsui

A passing of the torch, a change of perspectives: looking back, the 69th Cannes Film Festival could be seen as some kind of a watershed for Cambodian cinema. With two feature films making their world premieres during the 10-day event, the 2016 edition certainly ranks as one of the country’s most prominent international cinematic outings in recent years.

But the significance goes well beyond merely the numbers. This is also a year in which a veteran auteur offers a marked departure from his much-celebrated aesthetics, while a fresh-faced filmmaker steps up to offer a Cambodia very much different from what international audiences have always imagined the country to be. Changes are afoot in both style and substance, in both the way the country is represented and how the representing is done.

Not that Rithy Panh’s Exile and Davy Chou’s Diamond Island sprang out of nowhere, though. Having spent more than two decades of his career offering realist, matter-of-fact fictional and documentary features about Cambodia – among them previous Cannes titles such as Rice People (1994) and Duch: Master of the Forges of Hell (2010) – Panh has already signaled a change in style with his previous two films.

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