Monday, May 30, 2016, 22:30, Cinematheque 2
Tickets are available at 03-6060800 ext. 9
or click on English menu and select the date at the Cinematheque web site
Nathan Nicholovitch
Cast: David D’Ingeo, Nat Panna
France/Cambodia, 2015, 105 minutes
English, French and Khmer w/ English subtitles
World premiere - 2015 Cannes Film Festival
Chéris-Chéris 2015 – Best Feature Film and Best Actor Awards
International Film Festival of Geneva 2015 – Best Feature Film Award
MEZIPATRA Queer Film Festival Prague 2015 – Special Jury Award
Festival Zinegoak of Bilbao 2016 – Special Jury Award
This realistic drama has a magnetizing grip on audiences. It tells the story of Mirinda, a French cross-dresser living in the Cambodian capital of Phnom-Penh, where she works as a prostitute.
One day, her partner Viri disappears, and Mirinda finds four girls, aged 10 to 12, locked up in her apartment, one of whom she proceeds to adopt. To her astonishment, she realizes that her partner was involved in smuggling girls from the Philippines to work as prostitutes, and was probably murdered by his operator.
She decides to escape with the nameless girl to the house of an old client living in a remote village, but even there the distant past does not relinquish its hold on her. For the first time in her life Mirinda develops maternal feelings as she realizes that she is the only person who truly cares about the girl.
Where There Is Shade is one of those films that linger on in viewers’ minds long after they have left the cinema.
Director Nathan Nicholovitch confronts two themes that are not easily acknowledged in Cambodian society: trafficking of children for prostitution on the one hand, and the Khmer Rouge genocide of 1975-1979, some of which perpetrators are walking about free and unpunished, on the other.
Leading actor David D’Ingeo delivers a powerful performance that has rightfully earned him the Best Actor Award at Chéris-Chéris, the Paris LGBT film festival, in 2015.