The forest. I plunged into its mystery, caught between apprehension and enthusiasm. I had been warned: life here is tough. No network, no comfort, just the breath of nature. Yet, I sought to reconnect with the essence, to listen to this nourishing land.
I wanted to share the daily life of a disappearing people, aware that their culture is fading, that the bond to the forest is breaking.
The question arises: why is this people disappearing? Their sad faces, their lost gazes tell of a desperate struggle. They are survivors, or soon to be shadows. Expropriation, corruption, alcoholism, despair…
The forest calls to them, but modernity swallows them whole. In less than a generation, acculturation will have taken place.
Rithy Panh
