Trigger Warning: family abuse, corpses and gore

Set in rural Laos, the sci-fi thriller The Long Walk is a powerful critique of the violence enacted by so-called progress narratives and the sharp boundaries that exist between modern technology and traditional shamanic beliefs. The intertwined story – about a time-travelling killer, an innocent boy, and the company of ghosts – gives us a lesson on how generational trauma is cyclical.

Davy Chou’s Golden Slumbers is one for cinema lovers. It is a film which shows how deeply political conditions shape the ups and downs of the movie industry in Cambodia, but also sheds light on the possibility of survival through the lens of the Khmer diaspora. Through conversations with its surviving actors, the film is a nostalgic longing for a time when the Cambodian film industry was flourishing.

Nhà Cây The Tree House
Truong Minh Quý, Vietnam/Singapore 2019, 84 min.

This sci-fi documentary, set on Mars in the year 2045, is a window into the lives of the Ruc, Kor and Hmong ethnic minorities. The filmmaker interweaves personal memories and longings with historical footage filmed by American soldiers during the American War in Vietnam. Amidst the visual layers the question about the violence of representation of the other emerges. In the end, The Tree House becomes a meditation on the possibility of re-constructing a collective home.