LAST NIGHT I SAW YOU SMILING
Film poster for "Last Night I Saw You Smiling" with device on painting of flowers.
LAST NIGHT I SAW YOU SMILING
Film poster for "Last Night I Saw You Smiling" with device on painting of flowers.
Director Kavich Neang records his family and neighbors as they prepare to depart Phnom Penh's landmark White Building in the face of eviction and demolition

LAST NIGHT I SAW YOU SMILING

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NETPAC AWARD - International Film Festival of Rotterdam | SPECIAL JURY PRIZE - Jeonju International Film Festival STUDENT JURY PRIZE - Tokyo FilmEx

Architecture Cities Urban Heritage and Memory Eviction Land Grabbing Gentrification • Neoliberal Development and Displacement • New Khmer Architecture

Date of Completion: 2019 | Run Time: 78 minutes​​ | Language: Khmer with English, French & Spanish subtitles | Captions: Yes | Includes: Transcript | Director: Kavich NeangProducers: Davy Chou,  Daniel Mattes & Marine Arrighi de Casanova | Cinematographer: Kavich Neang | Editors: Félix Rehm & Vincent Villa | Sound Designer: Vincent Villa | Re-Recording Mixer: Vincent Villa

“We’re used to seeing a house for its roof, windows, and walls. But in the end, as we move out of here, it breaks my heart." Filmmaker Kavich Neang's father is one of the hundreds of residents who must leave the iconic White Building in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. This housing block bore witness to a tremendous series of events: the young nation's Golden Age; a traumatic breakdown under a radical regime; decades of cultural revival centered within its walls; and, the rapid pace of capitalist development that would ultimately lead to its demise. Now the once radiant walls are grey and damaged. Neang, born here in 1987 and raised inside, once dreamed of shooting a fiction film here, but reality overtook his plan. It’s now the location for his first full-length documentary. When demolition comes, it’s all just a memory.

Asian Movie Pulse | Rouven Linnarz
"The message could not be more obvious about how the building, despite its decaying structures, has become a home, a source of life and history which is now in the (bureaucratic) process of being demolished and replaced."

Toronto Film Critics Association | José Teodoro
"Racing against time, he [Neang] shot a documentary instead, one made in a spirit akin to that of Pedro Costa’s In Vanda’s Room."

University of Westminster (London, UK); CREAM | May Adadol Ingawanij, Professor of Cinematic Arts at the University of Westminster and Co-director of the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media
"A new wave film that looks beyond the lives of the young, asserting the depth of relational bonds – neighbourly kinship, ancestrally forceful sense of place – as, at least for now, spiritual force."
"The shots of the almost empty corridors in the process of being made to disappear points to that space in its potentiality. This was here. This corridor here was where bodies mingled, songs from different eras and sounds from different worlds mixed, and where doors that might have shut out each unit of dwelling persisted in remaining ajar until the day they came down."

University of Sussex | James Harvey, Lecturer in Film Studies
"Cambodian filmmaker Kavich Neang’s painterly study of the evicted residents of Phnom Penh’s White Building."

University of Colorado Boulder | Lauren Collins,Assistant Professor and Director of the Asian Studies Program
"The history of the white building intersects with the history of arts development in Cambodia, as well as widening economic gaps that are impacted by foreign investment from China, Japan, and other countries looking to profit off the high growth rate that Cambodia has."

AWARDS
NETPAC Award | IFF Rotterdam
Special Jury Prize | Jeonju IFF
Special Jury Award | Los Angeles Asian Pacific FF
Best Director, Documentary | Tacoma FF
Best Image | Janela de Cinema do Recife
Special Mention, Grand Jury | Tokyo FilmEx
Student Jury PrizeTokyo FilmEx 

FILM FESTIVALS
Cinéma du Réel
Visions du Réel
Art of the Real
Taipei FF
Locarno FF
Open City Documentary Festival
Seminci Valladolid
Montréal International Documentary Festival - RIDM
Singapore IFF
Subversive Festival
CAAMFest
Chicago Underground Film Festival
Bangkok Asean Film Festival
EBS Int'l Do Festival
Arkipel
Wathann FF
Kota Kinabalu IFF
Cambodia Town FF
Black Canvas FCC
Santa Fe Independent FF
Docville - Image de Ville / L'urbanographe
Document Film Festival
Minsk "Listapad" Int'l Film Festival
Dharamshala International Film Festival
Hong Kong Asian Film Festival
San Diego Asian Film Festival
Antofacine
Cámara Lúcida Encuentros Cinematograficos
Cinetekton Festival
FIC Autor
Tayangan BMW Shorties
Jogja NETPAC Asian FF
Africa International Film Festival
Festival Forum Dokumenter
Salamindanaw Asian FF
Hainan Island IFF
Festival Transcinema
Cinema Verite Documentary Festival
Cinema On The Bayou
IBAFF Muricia
Portland IFF
Sharjah Art Foundation
Cambodia International Film Festival
Liberation DocFest (Online)
FIDBA
Fukuoka Focus on Asia Festival
Luang Prabang Film Festival
Urban Lens Festival
Ecráns Urbains
Institut Français du Cambodge
Sco Dushanbe Film Festival
Painting With Light, NGS
Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival
International Architecture Film Festival
Triennale D'Art Nomad