Khmerica

In a new geopolitical season in which buzzwords such as deportation and repatriation have ominously resurfaced, it is particularly revealing and heartbreaking to witness their impact on a micro-community that has already experienced this fate: The Cambodian-American protagonists of Khmerica had fled Pol Pot's regime and genocide with their families as children, grown up in poverty in the United States, fallen into the circles of street gangs and petty crime, engaged in trafficking, theft, and violence of all kinds, until they faced imprisonment and, starting in 2002, deportation. The three filmmakers visited Cambodia over the course of several collaborations with director Rithy Panh, learned the language and got to know a group of Khmericans. Joker, Kookie, Djumbo and their companions are big guys with big dogs and big tattoos, but also big regrets, a kind of self-help group among the victims of a double exile that has condemned them to being perpetual foreigners, between old and new families, ruins of the past and vain attempts to rebuild themselves and rebuild future.

Sergio Fant

Antoine Guide
Khmerica, 2025

Thibaut Amri
Khmerica, 2025

Lucas Sénécaut
Khmerica, 2025