Social Impact Media Awards (SIMA) began as the first and only international media competition to celebrate creative, human rights and humanitarian achievement. Today, SIMA is the most prestigious global curator of social impact, serving the independent film, academic and global social justice communities around the world.

This year, SIMA Traveling Series 2024 teams up with Meta House’s “Speak Out, Sisters” project, featuring a selection of documentaries by and about women from Cambodia and many other countries. Each night, a Cambodian female filmmaker shows and discusses her recent short film, followed by the screening of selected SIMA documentaries. Entrance is free. All films have English subtitles.

VOICES FILM FESTIVAL @ META HOUSE, DAY 5

Resilience Rising, Stories of Women fighting for peace

Day 5 features two presentations about Cambodians in the American diaspora by filmmakers Dr. Lin Da Saphan and Penh Samnang Kann.

LinDa Saphan is a Fulbright Scholar and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Mount Saint Vincent (NYC). She is the author of „Faded Reels“, and the lead researcher and associate producer for the documentary film “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll”. Her short film NATE FROM LOWELL (2016, 7min) introduces you to a music collector, who is at the heart of the preservation of Cambodian popular music.

Script writer/director PenhSamnang Kan currently lectures at the Department of Media and Communication at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. Previous employments were with NGO DCCAM and private TV station CTN. Her film THE KHMER CERAMIST (2019, 11min) follows a legendary ceramist who survived the Khmer Rouge regime. He is one of the few artists who have brought Cambodian art to the global stage and was awarded with the NEA National Heritage Fellowship in 2015.

* THE TAKEOVER (Afghanistan, 2023, 33min): Filmed over the first year the Taliban retake control of Afghanistan, this film documents the country’s rapid transformation and the women who refuse to lose their rights. Starting as the US left Afghanistan, The Takeover follows women as the country changes to fit the Taliban’s ideology, the film moves through the women’s experience, protests and daily life in the cities and countryside, and we see how restrictions on women’s basic freedoms are enforced.

* NO SIMPLE WAY HOME (South Sudan/Kenya, 2022, 85min): As South Sudan hangs in the balance of a tenuous peace agreement, a mother and her two daughters return home from exile. Director Akuol de Mabior shows the mother’s mission to safeguard her late husband’s vision for their people, family, and country. Her daughters struggle to come to terms with what it means to call South Sudan home.