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Kavich Neang

Kavich Neang

Directing

Biography

Kavich NEANG (1987, Cambodia) studied Music and Dance before graduating in Design in 2013. In 2010, he directed his first short film, A Scale Boy, as part of a documentary film workshop led by filmmaker Rithy Panh, who also produced his 2013 mid-length documentary film Where I Go. In 2014, he co-founded the independent production company Anti-Archive. His third short fiction, New Land Broken Road (2018), is part of a Southeast Asian omnibus which premiered in Singapore. He directed the documentary Last Night I Saw You Smiling (2019) and White Building (2021), which premiered at Venice Film Festival 2021.

Known For

White Building
6.4

Samnang, 20, faces the demolition of his lifelong home in Phnom Penh and the pressures from family, friends, and neighbors which arise and intersect in this moment of sudden change.

White Building

2021
Doi Boy
6.3

Sorn, an ethnic Shan sex worker, tries to build a future in Chiang Mai, Thailand, as a refugee far from home, but he is drawn into a complex relationship with one client, an investigator probing a political activist.

Doi Boy

2023
Becoming Human
7.0

Thida, the spirit guardian of an old cinema facing demolition, must confront her existence as a ghost and the choice of rebirth. When she meets Hai, a living human with whom she forms a deep bond, their connection forces her to face not only her spiritual destiny but also the realities of a country undergoing profound economic and social change.

Becoming Human

2025
Last Night I Saw You Smiling
7.0

Kavich Neang documents the final days of the White Building in Phnom Penh, an architectural landmark he had lived in since birth.

Last Night I Saw You Smiling

2019
Three Wheels
4.0

On a lonely night, Tuk Tuk driver Nath meets a woman who reminds him of his past. Returning home, he confesses to his wife that he wants to move. This realization ultimately reveals the unspoken realities of their marriage dating from the Khmer Rouge period.

Three Wheels

2015
Further and Further Away
7.5

Before their impending departure for the capital city, two siblings first must bid farewell to the place they called home, each in their own way.

Further and Further Away

2022
Sunrise in My Mind
9.0

A young woman working late at night at a beauty salon gives into her restrained interest in a young man who spends his evenings driving Phnom Penh's streets by motorbike as a delivery man.

Sunrise in My Mind

2021
Fragment
N/A

Fragment is an omnibus film celebrating the strength and diversity of South-East Asian independent cinema. Made up of a collage of ten stories, each story distinctively embraces the other's subjectivities through the collective sentiments of vulnerability and fortitude. This film is commissioned by the Asian Film Archive (AFA) for its tenth anniversary celebrations.

Fragment

2015
New Land Broken Road
6.3

Phnom Penh at night. Three young hip-hop dancers drive a single motorbike and stop on a muddy deserted road. Nick leaves the others to look for an iPhone he heard was lost in the area. Piseth and Thy discuss their hopes and doubts, and Piseth shows his best Michael Jackson moves. They meet Leakhena, a young female street vendor whose cart is full of colors.

New Land Broken Road

2018
California Dreaming
6.0

Two women of different backgrounds encounter one another at an oceanfront resort. They then discover a hidden bond that allows them to escape from their realities.

California Dreaming

2019
Turn Left Turn Right
6.3

Kanitha, a young, free-spirited Cambodian woman in her 20s, lives in modern-day Phnom Penh, working multiple jobs and choosing to live how she pleases. However, her daydreaming creates tension with her traditional mother, who wants a daughter that will settle down to get married, and Kanitha seems ambivalent to her father's deteriorating health. The family's struggle seems immutable, but Kanitha dreams an idea born from memories of her father. TURN LEFT TURN RIGHT is structured as an album, with tracks and sounds influencing the form. The film weaves Cambodian rock songs together with motifs of family, nature, and boundless imagination.

Turn Left Turn Right

2016
A Scale Boy
N/A

Kavich Neang’s first film is a short documentary following Sory Chan, a 14-year-old boy who is living in Phnom Penh apart from his family. A student of Cambodian classical music, Sory lives with his mother’s friend after his mother fled a debt she couldn’t afford to pay back. Each evening after class, he carries a scale outside in a popular part of the city and asks people to weigh themselves for a small amount of money. In this urgent film, we witness Sory’s day in class, his nightly routine and a particularly difficult conversation with his mother who he meets on the street.

A Scale Boy

2010
Dream Land
10.0

Lida, a careerdriven woman in her late 20s in the developing metropolis of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, sells modern and upscale real estate developments to the growing middle and upper class in contemporary Cambodia. Lida may be thriving as a top real estate agent, but in her personal life , her relationship with her photographer boyfriend is deteriorating. Unable to escape the trauma and prison of her interior monologue, she travels to the quiet beach town of Kep, Cambodia, with her close companions. While the growth and modernization of the city promote an urban and cultural erasure, Kep reveals treasures from Cambodia’s heritage. It is there that Lida discovers that the specters from the past haunt in sublime and beautiful ways.

Dream Land

2015
Goodbye Phnom Penh
N/A

Hidden in a hotel in the capital city of Phnom Penh, a young couple spends their final days together before one of them has to return home to her own country.

Goodbye Phnom Penh

2015
No image
N/A

On a Cambodian fishing island, Mera is turning 18. She rejects a marriage arranged by her aunt and instead organizes a trip with her close friend Bopha to a remote rocky island to visit a soldier who she met online. Weeks later, Mera vanishes. Bopha’s search begins. As the weeks pass without resolution, Bopha starts to understand the inner secrets and hidden desires of her missing friend, and her own.

To Leave, To Stay

Cambodia 2099
6.0

Phnom Penh, Cambodia. On Diamond Island, the country's pinnacle of modernity, two friends tell each other about the dreams they had the night before.

Cambodia 2099

2014
No image
N/A

Pattica is a Cambodian-Cameroonian, who never met his father and grew up in an orphanage in Phnom Penh. The discrimination he faces because of his skin color compels him to discover more about his identity and origins.

Where I Go

2014
The Nightseekers
N/A

Five young brothers drive the streets of Phnom Penh each night in search of venues to perform their break-dancing routine to earn something to support their family.

The Nightseekers

2026