Rice People
| Rice People | |
|---|---|
The DVD cover.
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| Directed by | Rithy Panh |
| Produced by | Jacques Bidou Pierre-Alain Meier |
| Written by | Ève Deboise Rithy Panh |
| Based on |
No Harvest But a Thorn by Shahnon Ahmad |
| Starring |
Peng Phan Mom Soth Chhim Naline |
| Music by | Jean-Claude Brisson Marc Marder |
| Cinematography | Jacques Bouquin |
| Edited by | Andrée Davanture Marie-Christine Rougerie |
| Distributed by | Facets Video |
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Release date
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Running time
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125 minutes |
| Country | Cambodia |
| Language | Khmer |
Rice People (Khmer: អ្នកស្រែ, Neak sre) is a 1994 Cambodian drama film directed and co-written by Rithy Panh. Adapted from the 1966 novel Ranjau Sepanjang Jalan (No Harvest But a Thorn), by Malaysian author Shahnon Ahmad, which is set in the Malaysian state of Kedah, Rice People is the story of a rural family in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia, struggling to bring in a single season's rice crop. It was filmed in the Cambodian village of Kamreang, in the Kien Svay and Boeung Thom areas of Kandal Province near Phnom Penh, on the banks of the Mekong River. The cast features both professional and non-professional actors.
The film premiered in the main competition at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival and was submitted to the 67th Academy Awards, the first time a Cambodian film had been submitted as a possible nominee for Best Foreign Language Film.
In Cambodia, where families were torn apart in the communist Khmer Rouge's genocidal bid to transform the country into an agrarian utopia, it is ironic that people have lost touch with the land. For a generation of children, the rice comes not from the ground, but from a sack, offloaded from the back of a United Nations relief truck.
So it is in these uncertain times, that a Cambodian family is attempting to grow rice. The father, Pouev, is concerned that the family's plot of land is shrinking, and he might not be able to grow a big enough crop.
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Wikipedia