Danech San
DirectorDaniel Mattes
ProducerCambodia
CountryLogline
Bored of her island life, Mera travels with her friend Bopha to visit a soldier she met online. Weeks later, Mera goes missing. Bopha’s search begins.
Short Synopsis
Mera and Bopha are best friends, 18, living on the Cambodian fishing island Koh Sdach.
Mera has lived with her aunt Nary from a young age. Nary wants her to marry and move to Phnom Penh, but Mera detests the proposed fiancé.
She has grown interested in a soldier she met online awhile ago. The soldier is posted on a rocky island out in the ocean for his assignment.
She travels to the island to visit the soldier with Bopha and their friend Chivi. Bopha is surprised to learn of the soldier; she always thought she knew all of Mera’s secrets.
But Bopha soon discovers Mera has disappeared. She and Nary cannot find her anywhere and grow desperate realizing she must have left the island.
Rainy season arrives, and the rocky island is too dangerous to visit. Mera’s friends and family pause the search.
Bopha and Nary return to their routines but also find new relationships. Soon, they are not really thinking about Mera anymore. They are living with a new purpose.
Even as time passes, Bopha cannot shake the question of what happened to Mera. She and Chivi travel again to the rocky island but learn the soldier has been transferred elsewhere.
They stare out at the sea and wait overnight, unsure of what might happen.
Perhaps what they have been looking for has finally arrived.
Danech San
Danech SAN is a Cambodian director born in Battambang in 1991. After moving to Phnom Penh to study interior design, she turned to filmmaking and has since worked in different production roles on films with Anti-Archive since 2015. Her first short film, A Million Years (2018), won Best Southeast Asian Short in Singapore and the Arte Award at Kurzfilm Hamburg. Her second short, Sunrise in My Mind, premiered in competition in Busan and won the Grand Prix at PÖFF Shorts in Tallinn, Estonia. Both films have been broadcasted on Arte. She is an alumna of the Locarno Filmmakers Academy and SEAFIC Seed Lab. She is also the founder of the Kampung Film Festival, a new Cambodian festival promoting cinema culture in a non-urban context.
She is currently developing her first feature film, To Leave, To Stay.
She is presently in Paris, taking part in the Résidence of Cannes.
Daniel Mattes
Anti-Archive is a Cambodian film production company created in 2014 by filmmakers Davy Chou, Steve Chen, and Kavich Neang. Anti-Archive produces and co-produces fiction and documentary films by the emerging, new generation of Cambodian filmmakers, as well as films by international, independent directors shooting in Cambodia and Southeast Asia. Deliberately provocative, the name Anti-Archive invites one to rethink the relationship of films and filmmakers with the past and history. The founders recognized the need for film production infrastructure in this part of Southeast Asia to support young independent filmmakers, some of whom have since shown their first works internationally. The films produced and co-produced by Anti-Archive have premiered and received awards at festivals around the world, including Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Locarno, Busan, and Rotterdam. Davy Chou and Daniel Mattes are the delegate producers of Danech San’s debut feature film, TO LEAVE, TO STAY, for Anti-Archive.