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To Leave, To Stay

Mera and Bopha live on a fishing island. When Mera vanishes, Bopha must learn to live without her.

synopsis

Mera and Bopha, best friends on a Cambodian fishing island, are inseparable at 18. Pressured into an arranged marriage by her aunt, Mera instead falls for a soldier she only knows online. Drawn to his distant, rocky outpost, Mera convinces Bopha and their fisherman friend Chivi to accompany her, but during the trip she mysteriously disappears without a trace. In the aftermath, Bopha struggles to move on, even as she pursues new friendships, a new job at a growing beach resort, and romance with a young man named Chhay. Yet questions about Mera linger, drawing Bopha into a search for answers. She journeys back to the rocky island, where unresolved emotions blur into intimacy with her old friend Chivi under the night sky. Years later, as Bopha drifts through changing landscapes, from tourist resorts rising on her home island to gleaming towers in Singapore, she continues to carry Mera’s absence with her, searching the sea for answers and for her own place in a world transformed.

Director’statement

When I first visited Koh Sdach, a coastal fishing island, many memories from my teenage years resurfaced. I found a place full of yearning for freedom, shadowed by limits, where one imagines another life without knowing how to claim it. I have since returned often, deepening my relationship with the community while witnessing rapid transformations: luxury development, family displacement, young people imagining futures beyond the sea. My film follows two young women whose stories reflect the questions I once asked myself. Mera is fierce, refusing to let tradition or expectation define her. When she disappears, her best friend Bopha is left behind, navigating life without her and confronting the void in her own identity. Through Mera and Bopha, I explore the dreams and uncertainties of Cambodia’s younger generation. I ask what we owe to tradition, family, and ourselves, how a place informs our sense of belonging, and whether new futures can be imagined from within familiar landscapes.

TFL PROGRAMME:
FeatureLab 2025

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