Film Chronicles Tension in Cambodia's Growth

UC Merced will have a public screening of “A River Changes Course,” which tells the story of three families living in contemporary Cambodia, facing hard choices forced by rapid development and the struggle to maintain their traditional ways of life.

The film will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 9, in Classroom and Office Building Room 120.

It is co-sponsored by Core 1 and ENVE 10, Environment in Crisis.

Premiering at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, the film explores the damage rapid development has wrought in Cambodia on both a human and environmental level.

Cambodia is in the midst of a massive economic land concessions crisis, resulting in nearly 2.2 million hectares of land being reallocated from farmers and villagers to private firms, according to the filmmaker. Since 2003, more than 40,000 Cambodians have been affected by these large-scale land grabs. As companies push in to clear forests for timber and land to grow major industrial agricultural crops like rubber, sugar cane, soy and cassava, villagers are forced off their farmlands.