The White Building was the colloquial name for Phnom Penh’s most artistically significant yet endangered community: a high-density apartment complex, designed in 1963 as part of an architecturally and culturally visionary precinct for arts in a culturally booming, newly independent Cambodia. In 2017, Samnang (20) faces the demolition of his lifelong home and the pressures from family, friends, and neighbours which arise and intersect in this moment of sudden change. WHITE BUILDING (2021, 90mins) is directed by Neang Kavich, who grew up in the same building. The film inspires faith that the first-time-director could eventually become an articulate local storyteller — a poet of lives caught in history — like its co-producer Jia Zhangke is for mainland China.

Director will attend the screening (Q&A). English subs.

5 USD Entrance Fee, benefitting the production company “Anti-Archive”