La Terre des âmes errantes

In 1999, the laying of the first fibre-optic cable in South-East Asia crossed through Cambodia. This “information highway”, which is aimed at furthering integration into the world economy, is to join up with the cable that goes from Europe along the Silk Route to link with China. In Cambodia, the works involve digging a 1m-deep trench from the Thai border over to the Vietnamese frontier and then laying the cable, which is no wider than a thumb. It is, of course, an opportunity for many Cambodians, whether they be poverty-stricken farmers, demobilised soldiers or families without resources, to find a job. The trench digging encounters a region that is mined, as well as the obsessive presence of the millions of unburied victims whose souls harass those who have survived. Throughout the works, where pick-axes, hoes or hands make good, the trench digging reveals all the anguish of having to keep one’s job despite the economic violence that fills daily life. The film advances with the trench, portraying several central characters who well epitomise the hardships and contradictions the country must overcome in its struggle to survive and in its determination to re-establish ties with an ancestral culture that has also been devastated by long years of war.