A first $10,000 award is granted to the Cambodian filmmaker Polen Ly for his project The Tongue of Water

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Neang, an indigenous mother leads a quiet life with her four children and old parents in a new hut by their forest after losing her home and village in a hydropower dam’s reservoir. Neang’s family is one among other fifty families, who decided to remain on their ancestral land, while most of other villagers moved to the compensation land, including her ex-husband, leaving her and their children behind. To live close to nature allows Neang and her family a more independent and peaceful livelihood.

But, her dream for peace is being under threat from the authority, who claims the ownership of the land to a Chinese rubber plantation, who plans to invade the entire green land. Neang bonds with her villagers to protect their homes and forest land by going through different struggles with the authority, while she’s herself slowly rebuilding the new life with her family, as a single mother.