Full Description
All is not as it seems in the harrowing, unforgettable Phnom Penh Lullaby. Polish documentary filmmaker Pawel Kloc opens with lyrical, carefully composed shots of the Southeast Asian capital, where we meet a very unlikely family. Twitchy Ilan Schickman, a naive Israeli émigré, makes a meager living reading tarot cards to support his Cambodian girlfriend, Saran, and their two daughters, two-year-old Marie and six-month-old Jasmine. Gradually, Kloc’s camera begins to uncover the disturbing reality of the family’s nightly existence. On a particularly evil stretch of road lined with rats, crime and prostitution, Ilan plies his card trade while Saran drinks herself to near oblivion. Worst of all, the infant daughters are in tow, constantly eyed by street lowlifes intent on selling the girls on the black market. These sequences are intercut with grainy hidden-camera footage capturing ugly exchanges with pimps and drunk tourists eager to exploit children. Kloc constantly keeps the audience off-balance in his narrative scheme, mirroring this desperate world that seems to be teetering on the brink of madness. But one thing is certain: This unflinching portrait of a family adrift easily makes Phnom Penh Lullaby one of the strongest docs of the year.
