Waiting for Cambodia

They are afraid to go home.  They won’t be accepted into a third country.  And in the long run, they can’t stay where they are.  That’s the dilemma facing more than a quarter of a million Cambodians who fled the Vietnamese invasion and ouster of the Khmer Rouge for the refugee camps on the Thai-Cambodian border.

Waiting for Cambodia examines the diplomatic and political stalemate that keeps the refugee camps full even as the people warehoused there struggle to preserve their endangered cultural heritage.  Cambodian classical dance, an ancient tradition very nearly wiped out by the Khmer Rouge regime inside Cambodia, is now under the constant threat of Vietnamese artillery in the border camps.

Capturing a feeling for Cambodia’s past as well as its present, the film highlights and looks deep into the human cost of a the geopolitical impasse that leaves Cambodian refugees stranded on the Thai border for a dozen years, the result of a policy characterized best by U.S. Congressman Steven Solarz, “It’s as if we want to make Cambodia Vietnam’s Vietnam.”


Shari Robertson, Director
David A. Feingold, Producer
Ophidian Films

National PBS broadcast

Awards:
Red Ribbon, New York Expo

From the Critics:
“A moving documentary... doesn't claim to have answers, but it poses its disturbing, soul-searching questions honestly and effectively.”-- The Christian Science Monitor

<< BACK | ALL PROJECTS